EVOLUTION OF MAN 



gans in the highest order the Mammalia being 

 then, as now, essentially the same in all. From some 

 unknown parent form, so far as we know, now ex- 

 tinct, came several lines of descent ; from some of 

 them arose the anthropoid apes, the gorilla, ourang 

 outang, etc.; from another branch Ancestral Man. 



Huxley thinks this common ancestor was a Pro- 

 simian or Lemur, graniverous or frugivorous, and 

 arboreal in its habits. The Lemurs are represented 

 now only by a few forms found in some parts of Asia, 

 Africa, Madagascar and the Sunda Islands. Haeckel 

 does not go so far back for man's origin, and defines 

 him as a "Decidual discoplacental, or catarrhine 

 ape/' with fur, and arboreal habits as before de- 

 scribed. 



The Simian or Ape-like descendants remained un- 

 changed ; they followed the general course of in- 

 heritance, and are now what practically they were 

 then. It is seen from the above that Haeckel differs 

 from Huxley in considering the true apes our direct 

 ancestors, rather than that there was a common an- 

 cestor more remote, the anatomical structure of the 

 placenta in apes, as it is in man, especially leading 

 the former to that conclusion. 



Be that as it may, the divergence of the two lines 

 of descent became wider and wider. While the 

 apes followed the laws of general heredity, with the 



