MONKEYS. 75 



So thought Dr. J. W. Dawson, principal of M'Gill College, Montreal, an acute zoologist. He, 

 like Dr. Vogt, predicted that if any osseous remains of antediluvian man should be discovered, they 

 woidd probably present characters so different from those of modern races, that they might be 

 regarded as belonging to a distinct species.* But in a recent f)aper, he confesses, somewhat 

 despondingly, that " this anticipation has not yet been realized. "f To be sure he qualifies the 

 confession by the phrase, "with perhaps one exception," and that is the Neanderthal skull; which is 

 not an exception (at least is not thought so by those who have no theory to support). 



The geographical distribution of the recent species of Monkeys ranges everywhere between, 

 and does not extend far beyond, the Tropics. The only district where the}' do reach beyond a 

 tropic is Paraguay. 



The same question which met us in considering the original starting-point of ^lan again occurs 

 in the Monkey. We had tv.o races of Man, the black and white. We have in like manner 

 two sections of Monkeys, those of the New World and those of the Old, which latter are in various 

 resjiects more nearly allied to Man. When guessing at the relative antiquity of the two races of 

 Man, I gave the preference in ago to the black man, and indulged in the speculation that that race 

 peopled the supposed submerged Pacific continent, and that the point through which the passage 

 from the black man to the white had been made was to be sought in the direction of South America. 



There are objections to tracing the Monkeys in the same way. If we make the species found in 

 Africa, India, and the Indian Archijiclago, the corresponding equivalent of INIan in that region, 

 and therefore older than the species in South America, we reverse tlie order of dispersal which we 

 have supposed to have occurred in Man ; we place the highest Monkeys where the lowest Men are. 



But the cases are not parallel. Supposing Monkeys to have had their- origin on the same ground 

 as Man, and to have colonized South America, as he may have done, the introduction of species there 

 may have taken place before the advanced forms of IMonkej-s had come into being. If, by the power 

 of an enchanter, we coidd see everything as it stood at the jieriod of that colonization, we might find 

 that the colonists were then more advanced than their Old-world ancestors, and that the higher 

 tyjjcs have come into being in the African region subsequentl}^ to that date. 



As already mentioned. Professor Agassiz has pointed out the close degrees of affinity which 

 exist between allied species of animals possessed of a high degree of organisation. He remarks 

 that the Orang Outangs, which have been divided by some into four species, have been considered 

 by other naturalists as forming but a single one ; and the genus of long-armed Orangs, Hylobates (the 

 Gibbons of English naturalists), is considered by some as containing eleven sjjecies, while others make 

 but two or three.J A like remark may now be made on the Chimpanzees, of which five so-called 

 species have been described. The same is to be observed of the ilonkeys in the New World. The pre- 

 hensile-tailed species have been reduced by one author (Wagner)!^ to two, of which he regards the 

 second as doubtful, while Reichenbach || describes and figures no less than thirty-seven. Dr. Slack has 

 drawn a better medium between the extremes of these authors, and reckons them at fifteen. 



The Monkeys furnish several illustrations in favour of the former existence of a now .submerged 

 Pacific or Indo- African continent. 



* Dawson, J. W. "Archia," p. 237. § AVAOSEn, A. "Die Vollstandigate Naturgescbichte 



t Dawson, J. W. in " Edin. New Phil. .Tour." Jan. dor Afl'en," part i. 

 1864, p. 53. II Schreber's " Saugethiere." Supplemcut Band. vol. 



t "Proceed. American Acad. Arts and Sciences," vol. i. p. 207. 1840. 

 iii. p. 7. 18.57. 



