AFFINITIES AND OKNEALOGT. 175 



The anthropomorphous apes, namely, the gorilla, chim- 

 panzee, orang, and hylobates, are by most naturalists sepa- 

 rated from the other Old AVorld monkeys, as a distinct 

 sub-group. I am aware that Gratiolet, relying on the 

 structure of the brain, does not admit the existence of this 

 sub-group, and no doubt it is a broken one. Thus the 

 oi*ang, as Mr. St. Gr. Mivart remarks,* ^* is one of the most 

 peculiar and aberrant forms to be found in the order. ''^ The 

 remaining non-anthropomorphous Old World monkeys are 

 again divided by some naturalists into two or three smaller 

 sub-groups ; the genus Semnopithecus, with its peculiar 

 sacculated stomach, being the type of one such sub-group. 

 But it appears from M. Gaudry^s wonderful discoveries in 

 Attica that during the Miocene period a form existed there 

 which connected Semnopithecus and Macacus ; and this 

 probably illustrates the manner in which the other and 

 higher groups were once blended together. 



If the anthropomorphous apes be admitted to form a 

 natural sub-group, then as man agrees with them not only 

 in all those characters which he possesses in common with 

 the whole Catarrhine group, but in other peculiar characters, 

 such as the absence of a tail and of callosities, and in gen- 

 eral appearance, we may infer that some ancient member of 

 the anthropomorphous sub-group gave birth to man. It is 

 not probable that, through the law of analogous variation, 

 a member of one of the other lower sub-groups should have 

 given rise to a man-like creature resembling the higher 

 anthropomorphous apes in so many respects. Iso doubt 

 man, in comparison with most of his allies, has undergone 

 an extraordinary amount of modification, chiefly in conse- 

 quence of the great development of his brain and his erect 

 position; nevertheless, we should bear in mind that he ^'^is 

 but one of several exceptional forms of Primates." \ 



Every natumlist who believes in the principle of evolu- 

 tion will grant that the two main divisions of the Simiadae, 

 namely, the Catarrhine and Platyrrhine monkeys, with their 

 sub-groups, have all proceeded from some one extremely 

 ancient progenitor. The early descendants of this progen- 

 itor, before they had diverged to any considerable extent 

 from each other, would still have formed a single natural 



* " Transact. Zoolog. Soc.," vol. vi, 1867, p. 214. 



f Mr. St. G. Mivart, ''Transact. Phil. Soc.," 1867, p. 410, 



