THE LAST STAGES IN THE GENEALOGY OF MAN. 



171 



is represented by an opposite trait in the skink. What appeared 

 to be evidence of more sluggish wits than the lizard possesses, is 

 the fact that it did not learn to associate my presence with a 

 supply of food, as was true of the others, but the truth is it was 

 its greater fear of man that held it back, and not really a want of 

 cunning. 



In many respects the skink recalls the snakes, and its manner 

 of crawling, often without making any use of the posterior limbs, 

 and generally keeping the body greatly bent, adds to the resem- 

 blance ; and so, despite its shyness and courage when captured, 

 evidences of intellectual strength, the skink seems lower in the 

 scale of intelligence than the pine-tree lizard, but they are prob- 

 ably their superiors ; and both are telling examples of the law of 

 evolution. 



THE LAST STAGES IN THE GENEALOGY OF MAN. 



By M. PAUL TOPINAED. 

 II. — Concluded. 



WE have still another question to examine before taking up 

 the relation between the Old World monkeys and man. 

 We have determined an intrinsic ascending series in the American 

 monkeys. Can we find a like one in the monkeys of the Eastern 

 Continent ? 



Two stages of evolution are first determined — one which con- 

 cerns the tailed or ordinary monkeys, and the other comprising 

 the four tailless catarrhinian or anthropoid apes, among which 

 also two degrees are recognized — one for the gorilla, chimpanzee, 

 and orang, and the other for the gibbon, which is the manifest 

 transition between these and the tailed apes, more particularly 

 the semnopithecoids. To these four must be added two fossil 

 anthropoids — the Pliopitliecus antiquus, observed in 1837 by E. 

 Lartet in the Miocene of Sansan, an animal jjrobably allied to the 

 gibbon, and the Dryopithecus Fontani, which was found by Fon- 

 tan in the Miocene of Saint-Gaudens, and which is incontestably 

 an anthropoid, but something other than existing anthropoids. 



We may also present as proof of evolution in the group of 

 monkeys the Mesopithecus pentelici, of which M. Gaudry has col- 

 lected in the Miocene of Pikermi, in Greece, specimens belonging 

 to twenty-five individuals. It does not fit into any of the existing 

 genera, but is allied by its skull to the semnoi^ithecus, and by its 

 limbs to the macacus. We can then suppose that it is the ances- 

 tor of these two by a kind of doubling of the type, such as seems 

 to have taken place in a considerable number of marsupial types. 



M. Vogt involuntarily furnishes an argument in favor of this 



