672 THE LAST STEPS IN THE GENEALOGY OF MAN. 



It resembles a squirrel, but it also approaches the monkeys and maki. 

 It has claws ouly ou the upper limbs; the thumb is freely developed and 

 is not oi)posable. In the lower limbs lour of the lingers have claws; 

 the well-developed thumb has a flat nail and is opposable. Its denti- 

 tion is curious, making it a rodent as an adult, and an insectivore or 

 lemur when an iufaut at its first dentition. Owen, de Blainville, Hux- 

 ley, Brehm, aud Vogt all place them among the leniuis. It is evi- 

 dently a primate at its incei^tion ; but a species as if hesitating whether 

 it should remain in the primates or in the rodents. The exposition of 

 M. Vogt, ou pages 13 aud 77 of his "Mammalia," implies that its origin 

 was in the insectivora. 



The lemurs projier are divided into fossil and recent. The former 

 appeared in the Eocene, aud at that time existed })arallel with the mar- 

 supials, which were then in the course of extinction, and the first pla- 

 cental mammals, which were the carnivores, the rodents, the ungulates 

 and the insectivores. Europe has furnished five genera, Aujerica more, 

 the most important being the auaptomorphus, Irom which Professor 

 Cope derives man. The present species may be divided into three geo- 

 graphical groups. The first and the most numerons embraces the island 

 of Madagascar, the second that island and Africa south of the Sahara. 

 The third the island of Ceylon, the peninsula of Malacca, the Moluccas, 

 and the Philippines. These regions constitute in the theory of Haeckel 

 the remains of a vast austral continent, which he has called Lemuria. 

 Among the genera belonging to the group of Madagascar I cite the 

 maki, the indris, aud the tarsius ; in the second group, the galago, of 

 which a species is louud only however in Madagascar; aud in the third 

 or oriental group the loris. 



The lemurs are arboreal aud nocturnal animals, as previously said. 

 Oken calls them the nocturnal monkeys of the Old World. They have 

 four opposable thumbs with a single exception, the'tarsier, wLich does 

 not have the upper thumbs opposable, but ouly the lower ones. All 

 their fingers, as a general rule, have nails, save the posterior index, 

 w'hich is armed with a claw, or the anterior little finger of the loris. 

 However, the nails are sometimes rudimentary and as though develop- 

 ing from the claw. Relative to the teeth it is impossible to establish a 

 general formula. The number varies from thirty to thirty-six. For 

 example, the formula of thirty-two has been given to man and the 

 catarrhine apes; the indri has thirty, because it lacks an upper pre- 

 molar ; the tarsier thirty-fonr, because it has a lower incisor less aud 

 for each jaw a premolar more; the maki thirty-six, because it has a 

 lower incisor and an upper premolar extra; the Loris also thirty-six, 

 because it has an incisor and a lower premolar more. All these con- 

 siderations tend to establish that the lemurs have not a fixed aud 

 homogeneous type, but that they constitute a transitional group from 

 animals with claws to animals witli nails, and should consequently bo 

 regarded as the first, if not the second, step (considering cheiromys as 



