2 Man's Place in Nature 



relationship was claimed to exist between man and the Old World 

 apes than between man and the New World apes, by Darwin 1 . 

 Selenkd 2 has pointed out that the placenta in Simiidae possesses a 

 similar structure (Placenta discoidalis capsularis) to that in man, as 

 distinguished from Old World monkeys, where the placenta bidiscoidalis 

 prevails. The very interesting observations upon the eye made by 

 Johnson (1901) 3 also demonstrated the close relationship between the 

 Old World forms and man, the macula lutea tending to disappear as 

 we descend in the scale of New World monkeys, and being absent 

 in the Lemurs. The results which I published upon my tests with 

 precipitins directly supported this evidence, for the reactions obtained 

 with the bloods of Simiidae closely resembled those obtained with 

 human blood, the bloods of Cercopithecidae came next, followed by 

 those of the Cebidae and Hapalidae, which gave but slight reactions 

 with antihuman serum, whilst the blood of Lemuroidea gave no indica- 

 tion of blood-relationship. 



According to Dubois (1896) 4 the relationships amongst the Anthro- 

 poid ea are represented by the accompanying genealogical tree, based 

 upon that of Haeckel (1895). In the paper by Dubois, the bones of 

 Pithecanthropus erectus are described as those of a probably ancestral 

 form of man, these having been found in early pliocene deposits in Java. 

 He places Dryopithecus between the Cercopithecidae and Simiidae, 

 after Gaudry (1890), and considers Prothylobates to represent a general- 

 ized hypothetical form to the common ancestor of all the man -like apes. 

 He regards Palaeopithecus as the direct ancestor of Pithecanthropus. 

 However this may be, the fact remains, that the degrees of reaction 

 obtained by me in my blood tests are in strict accord with this 

 genealogy, as pointing to the more remote relationship of the Cercopi- 

 thecidae, but especially of the New World monkeys, as indicated in 

 the tree. And we shall see that the study of the haemolysins has 

 given results in accord with what has been observed for the precipitius. 



A perusal of the pages relating to the tests made upon the many 

 bloods I have examined by means of precipitating antisera, will very 

 clearly show that this method of investigation permits of our drawing 



1 See Darwin, The Descent of Man. 



2 Selenka, cited by Friedentlml (i. 1900). 



3 Johnson, G. L. (1901), " Contributions to the Comparative Anatomy of the Mammalian 

 Eye, etc." Philos. Trans, of the Royal Society, B. vol. cxciv. pp. 182. 



4 Dubois, E. (14, iv. 1896), " Pithecanthropus erectus, eine Stammform des Meuschen." 

 Anatom. Anzeiger, Bd. xn. pp. 1 22. 3 figures. 



