40 THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE ANIMAL WORLD 



apes of the old world (Catarrhine group), and those 

 of the new world (Platyrhine group, distinct from 

 the first one by the large and flattened nose, and 

 by an extra premolar to each jaw). By his denti- 

 tion, reduced to thirty-two teeth, and by the con- 

 formation of his nostrils, man belongs to the first 

 group ; it cannot be denied that he is a descendant 

 of the Simian stock of the old world. 



In this group itself, the Anthropomorphous * 

 Apes the Gorilla, Chimpanzee, Orang-outang, and 

 Gibbon form a natural sub-group, which man 

 resembles by certain traits, such as the absence of 

 callosities and tail, and by his general appearance. 

 We may conclude from this that Man owes his 

 origin to some early member of the sub-group of 

 the Anthropomorphs. This ancestor probably lived 

 on the African continent, the native place of the 

 Gorilla and the Chimpanzee, and his divergence 

 from the Catarrhine stocks goes very far back, per- 

 haps to an epoch as far off as the Eocene period. 

 The absence of intermediate forms cannot surprise 

 us, in view of the very first principles of the theory 

 of natural selection, and, on the other hand, of the 

 backward or almost negative state of geological 

 researches in those tropical regions where man could 

 have been born. 



All this we easily see is only hypotheses and 

 probabilities, some of which at least seem inexact 

 in the actual state of our knowledge. For example, 

 the African origin of man and the throwing back 

 to the Eocene period of the first progenitor of the 



* The corresponding phrase used by English zoologists i 

 Anthropoid" Apes. ED. 



is of course 



