EARLY ONTOGENE'TIC PHENOMENA IN MAMMALS. 165 
present lemurs. That Wortman unites the Adapidz to the 
Primates s. str. and gives them not a subordinal rank but 
classes them as a family of equal value as the Cebide, the 
Cercopithecidz, the Simidz, and the Hominidz is an im- 
portant step, the justification of which can be better appre- 
ciated by trained paleontologists than by myself. But if 
Wortman is right in thus separating the Adapidze from the 
Lemuride, Nesopithecide, and Megaladapide, which are 
the super-families in which he subdivides his Lemuride, 
then he and others will have to trace downwards the line by 
which, on the one hand, these latter families and, on the 
other, the Primates (Adapidz included as above stated) are 
connected to earlier mammals of the Mesozoic in which the 
deep cleft which ontogeny demonstrates between the two 
may have been less, but traces of which must be deciphered 
out of osteological details.1 Perhaps that problem may prove 
to be too arduous, but even then we are in no way justified 
to follow Wortman when he proclaims his sole faith in 
osteological characters and voluntarily suppresses ontogenetic 
evidence where it exists, because in so many cases it does 
not exist or rather can never any more be brought to add its 
testimony to what osteology reveals us. 
J must in conclusion yet refer to a citation which Wortman 
gives from Flower and Lydekker’s ‘‘ Mammals, Living and 
Extinct.” Wortman is quite justified in thereby (l.c. 703, 
! Nesopithecus of Forsyth Major is an instructive example in this respect. 
Dr, Forsyth Major, from the unusually high development of the skull, and its 
many resemblances to the higher apes, concluded that it was an Anthropoid. 
Lydekker preferred to class it as a highly developed Lemuroid. Wortman 
followed him in this, undoubtedly after careful consideration of both Major’s 
and Lydekker’s argumentation, and instituted the super-family of Nesopithe- 
cide above referred to. Now, I have no doubt that the ontogenetical details 
_of Nesopithecus would immediately have settled this question. As it is, it 
seems to me that only a most careful examination of the entire skeleton, 
wherever available, will furnish material for a definite judgment. 
In the meantime we should, in this and other cases of so delicate and yet 
so important a nature, suspend our judgment, however much I would in the 
present case be willing to accept the validity of Lydekker’s opinion. 
