THE DESCENT OF THE PRIMATES 9 



have ranked with the Lemuroids or Prosimiae, 

 an order of mammals which has been looked 

 upon (as the German name of " Halbaffen " and 

 the Latin term " Prosimias " implies), as a sort of 

 half-way house between the lower mammals and 

 the monkeys and man. These Lemuroids are in 

 the present time restricted to the tropical forests 

 of the old world. 



The island of Madagascar may be said to be a 

 regular Lemurian " reserve," — numerous species, 

 quite unknown elsewhere, being there very cu- 

 riously distributed, some being even restricted to 

 small districts of the central mountain chain or 

 of the coast forest. 



The abundance of Lemuroids in Madagascar 

 has induced Haeckel to give to a supposed sub- 

 merged continent between Madagascar and con- 

 tinental India the name of Lemuria, and to fix 

 upon this hypothetical dry land as the original 

 starting-place whence the higher primates, — 

 monkeys and man, — slowly evolving out of 

 Lemuroids, have spread over the globe. We 

 will by and by see in how far this hypothesis 

 is confirmed or invalidated by what we know 

 at present. 



In the past history of the earth the distribu- 

 tion of Lemurs was far less restricted than it is at 



