Epilogue: What Comes of Studying Vertebrates 819 



The present classification of man as a primate mammalian chordate 

 is based entirely on his bodily structure. The ideal of modern classifica- 

 tion is that it should express genetic relationship and that it should be 

 so devised as to indicate the points where major and crucial evolu- 

 tionary steps have been taken — i.e., the initiation of important new 

 lines of specialization. The primates took such a step. Their shaping 

 of the environment to their own uses is perhaps the most radical step 

 in the whole course of evolution. While it is not necessarily linked with 

 bodily change except as to the microscopic structure of the brain, it is 

 truly a line of evolutionary specialization. Man has already gone far 

 enough along this line that a wide gap exists between him and his 

 nearest allied vertebrates. Considered along with his environmental 

 auxiliaries and appurtenances which have come to be a characteristic 

 and essential part of him, man differs from other mammals vastly 

 more than they differ from reptiles. 



The time will come, and perhaps now is, when men should be 

 assigned to an additional Class of vertebrates. If it were to be done 

 now, it might be designated (the present classification comprising six 

 Classes) as CLASS VII, ANTHROPOIDEA, using the name now 

 applied to a Suborder. The lemurs and tarsiers should be left under 

 Mammalia and recognized as an Order closely allied to Insectivora. 

 The Order might best be called by the old name Prosimii, to suggest 

 that its members have some faintly simian characteristics. The Pro- 

 simii, slightly apelike mammals, would then occupy a position analo- 

 gous to that of the Theromorpha, an ancient Order of slightly mammal- 

 like reptiles. 



The CLASS ANTHROPOIDEA would necessarily be divided into 

 two subclasses: 



subclass 1, comprising the Platyrhina (South American monkeys) 

 and two Families of the Catarrhina (Cercopithecidae, Old World 

 monkeys; Simiidae, "great apes"), could be called protoanthro- 

 poidea — a group analogous to subclass prototheria of Mammalia. 



subclass 2, containing the present Family Hominidae. In some 

 far-distant future, when man's social wisdom shall have so far caught 

 up with his inventive intelligence as to justify the name for him, this 

 subclass might be designated as sapientia. 



