THE DESCENT OF THE PRIMATES 5 



been very suggestively called collective, or syu- 

 tlietic, types. 



Collective types are such as will allow us to 

 pass by comparatively small and gradual changes 

 from them to two or more different types, whicli 

 in them may have found their starthig-point. 

 Such collective types are not limited to the fossil 

 fauna. Among living mammals of the higher type 

 (that is, after exclusion of Duckbills and Marsu- 

 pials) a very marked collective type is presented by 

 such animals as the hedgehog and its hairy rela- 

 tive, the Indian Gymnura. This has been firmly 

 established by no less an authority than Huxley, 

 who in 1880, in a celebrated paper, "On the 

 Application of the Laws of Evolution to the 

 Arrangement of the Mammalia," vindicated that 

 position for these two genera, and declared that 

 in them, even more than in other Insectivora, we 

 "possess the key to every peculiarity which is 

 met with in the Primates, the Carnivora, and the 

 Ungulata." 



We shall in due time have to remind ourselves 

 of this momentous utterance of Huxley, and for 

 the moment will turn our attention to an animal 

 which could in no sense be looked upon as a col- 

 lective type, although some of its details suggest 

 its sio-nificance as an intermediate link between 



