20 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.63. 



Primates are primitive Lemurs, and classing them under "series 

 Lemuriformes " of the suborder Lemuroidea which he defined to in- 

 clude them." He here considered the Adapidae of both America and 

 Europe "typically lemuriform," and not only concluded that this 

 group "should be assigned to the suborder Lemuroidea" but "that 

 the older North American representatives of the family are the most 

 primitive known lemuroids." However, in criticising Wortman's 

 treatment of the Adapidae, in which he placed this *group together 

 with the living Hapalidae of South America in the suborder Anthro- 

 poidea, Gregory conceded the possibility that subsequent discovery 

 might prove "that the earliest members of the Notharctine or North 

 American division of this family gave rise to the Platyrrhinae, or 

 monkeys of the New World." 



Both these able authorities have brought forward many and vigor- 

 ous arguments to sustain their opposing views, some of which will 

 have to await further discovery and wider anatomical knowledge of 

 many of the forms discussed to prove or disprove their validity. 

 Others will lose or gain in weight in the mind of the future investi- 

 gator, perhaps, according to his personal viewpoint or interpretation 

 of the facts. The last statement is especially true respecting the con- 

 clusions which may be reached regarding the evolutionary stage which 

 had been reached by the earlier Primates, especially as the list of 

 known forms is now increased by the several additional species of 

 Palaeocene age. In fact, different interpretation of characters seems 

 to have been the real source of the disagreements encountered in the 

 discussions defended by Wortman and Gregory. The latter seemed 

 to hold the, I believe, usually accepted view that the Eocene Pri- 

 mates, while having fully attained the characters of the order, are 

 exceedingly primitive creatures, none of them having passed beyond 

 the early lemuroid stage, and between which and present-day forms 

 exists an evolutionary gap sufficiently wide to admit the derivation 

 of most if not all of the modern families of both Lemurs and Anthro- 

 poids. Wortman, while apparently influenced by this general idea 

 of antiquity, seemed to consider it possible, in some cases at least, to 

 bridge this gap, and has gone more boldly into the problem of work- 

 ing out a phyletic classification based on actutil anatomical similari- 

 ties, which may characterize the several lines of descent as indi- 

 cated by their supposed evolutionary history. It was on this 

 basis that he reclassified the Primates, referring all the known Eocene 

 forms to primary divisions of the Anthropoidea. Besides the two 

 major divisions already mentioned, Wortman, in this reclassification, 

 recognized still another, the " Arctopithecini," adapted from Huxley's 

 classification, and which includes the living marmosets. The Paleo- 



>»Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 35, 1916, pp. 266,267. 



