Genealogy of Man 123 



tative, not qualitative, he has already shown. Very instructive in 

 this connection is the reference to the enormous diiference in mental 

 powers in another class. No one would draw from the fact that the 

 cochineal insect (Coccus) and the ant exhibit enormous differences in 

 their mental powers, the conclusion that the ant should therefore 

 be regarded as something quite distinct, and withdrawn from the 

 class of insects altogether. 



Darwin next attempts to establish the sj)ecijic genealogical tree of 

 man, and carefully weighs the differences and resemblances between 

 the different families of the Primates. The erect position of man is 

 an adaptive character, just as are the various characters referable to 

 aquatic life in the seals, which, notwithstanding these, are ranked as 

 a mere family of the Carnivores. The following utterance is very 

 characteristic of Darwin^: "If man had not been his own classifier, 

 he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his 

 own reception." In numerous characters not mentioned in systematic 

 works, in the features of the face, in the form of the nose, in the 

 structure of the external ear, man resembles the apes. The arrange- 

 ment of the hair in man has also much in common with the apes ; as 

 also the occurrence of hair on the forehead of the human embryo, 

 the beard, the convergence of the hair of the upper and under arm 

 towards the elbow, which occurs not only in the anthropoid apes, 

 but also in some American monkeys. Darwin here adopts Wallace's 

 explanation of the origin of the ascending direction of the hair in the 

 forearm of the orang, — that it has arisen through the habit of holding 

 the hands over the head in rain. But this explanation cannot be 

 maintained when we consider that this disposition of the hair is widely 

 distributed among the most different mammals, being found in the 

 dog, in the sloth, and in many of the lower monkeys. 



After further careful analysis of the anatomical characters Darwin 

 reaches the conclusion that the New World monkej-s (Platyrrhine) 

 may be excluded from the genealogical tree altogether, but that man 

 is an offshoot from the Old World monkeys (Catarrhine) whose 

 progenitors existed as far back as the Miocene period. Among these 

 Old World monkeys the forms to which man shows the greatest 

 resemblance arc the anthropoid apes, which, like him, possess neither 

 tail nor ischial callosities. Tlie platyrrhine and catarrhine monkeys 

 have their piimitive ancestor among extinct forms of the Lenmridae. 

 Darwin also touches on the question of the original home of the 

 human race and suj)poses that it may have been in Africa, because 

 it is there that man's nearest relatives, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, 

 are found. But he regards speculation on tliis point as useless. It is 

 remarkable that, in this connection, Darwin regards the loss of the 



1 Descent of Man, p. 231. 



