ANTHROPOIDEA. 25 



length exhibit an intellectual endowment characteris- 

 tic of the human race, though it might retain the short 

 legs and physical peculiarities of its parents. It might 

 not rival the highest of mankind in mental scope, but 

 it would be infinitely superior to the best trained ape. 



Sometimes nature departs from the even tenor of 

 her ways and produces a monster, or an individual 

 strikingly at variance with original or ancestral stock; 

 yet the saltus or leap is nearly always downward, an 

 inferior organization being the result. It is a lapse 

 and not a leap. If it could be. shown that the saltus 

 is ever forward or upward a step having been taken 

 from a lower to a higher grade there might be some 

 foundation for the supposition that the frisky little Sa- 

 pajou took a jump forward and became an homuncu- 

 lus, if there could be such a being; and this strange 

 creature at length raised itself to the status of savage 

 man ! 



There is a tendency in the organic world to im- 

 prove upon original stock by an inherent principle of 

 variation, but the conditions must all be favorable or 

 a corresponding lapse will occur. Changes for the 

 worst may be rapid ; but if they are for the better the 

 movement is so gradual that cycles of time must have 

 been consumed in attaining varieties, to say nothing 

 of species. To reach a difference that could be re- 

 garded as sufficient to establish an advanced species, 

 would demand a saltus or an extraordinary leap up- 

 ward ; but abrupt transitions have not been observed 

 to occur in the organic world, though cataclysms of 

 the physical world have stranded elephants in the ices 

 of Siberia. From any thing that has thus far been ob- 

 served to occur in the animal kingdom, there is noth- 

 ing to warrant the assumption that the human family 



