TARSIUS SPECTRUM 91 



lemur of the lemurs, to use an expression of Professor Howe's. It is certainly 

 more nearly related to the apes than most other lemurs. But on the other 

 hand, all the apes and lemurs are linked by a much closer bond of aflinity, 

 the one to the other, than are any of them to the other mammals. Tarsius is 

 unquestionably the most primitive living primate." 



A. A. W. Hubrccht, on the other hand, maintains that "tarsius is not a 

 lemur at all. It should never have been placed among the lemurs. Its position 

 is somewhere between an unknown type of inscctivores and oiu- modern 

 monkeys and man." 



Memoirs published within recent years by Forsyth-Major, Earle and 

 Standing have made it perfectly clear that the demonstration of the afTmities 

 of tarsius to the apes does not in any way affect the recognition of the fact 

 that it is at least as nearly related to the lemurs. So that Hubreeht's proposal 

 to restrict the term primates to tarsius and the apes lacks any adequate 

 justification. 



G. Elliot Smith speaks again even more emphatically concerning 

 the position of tarsius. He has, in fact, come to the conclusion that tarsius 

 is much more primitive and at the same time distinctly more pithecoid than 

 the lemurs. He believes that the primate stem flowed from its source among 

 a group of tarsius-like mammals. The apes and the lemurs were merely diver- 

 gent branches of this stem and the latter, the lemurs, as a suborder although 

 definitely specialized in structure, remained nearer to the Tarsiidae than to 

 the apes. 



The primates, he asserts, consist of three divergent phyla which have all 

 departed in varying degrees and in different ways from their original com- 

 mon ancestor which must have been a creature in many respects like tarsius, 

 but more macrosmatic and possessed of a small and less highly specialized 

 visual cortex. 



\\'oolIard, on the basis oi an exhaustive anatomical study, con- 



