THE DESCENT OF MAN.* 



The modern doctriue of evolution is that theory of the 

 origin of things as they now appear, which does not involve 

 the introduction of energy from without. In this respect it 

 is contrasted with the conception of creation. In biology 

 it ranks man as one of the animals — the highest animal, 

 if you please, but still an animal. The genealogy of man 

 is therefore included with that of all species of animals. 

 When the highest class. Mammalia, was developed, the pos- 

 sibility of man resided in it. Man is a vertebrate and a 

 mammal. The curiosity developed by the perception of 

 man's evident relation to other Mammalia has been answer- 

 ed by the discovery of the law of Evolution. 



We have now pretty nearly a complete record of the de- 

 scent of man. Low down in the genealogical line of man 

 are certain of the marsupials, or pouch-bearing Mammalia, 

 which bring forth their young in a very immature condition, 

 and carry and nourish them in a pouch until they become 

 able to walk. These survive now only in Australia, and 

 in the opossum of the Americas, though formerly they pre- 

 vailed over the whole world. Above the Marsupialia are 

 the Condylarthra, and from these branch out in one direc- 

 tion the groups of ungulate mammalia — the hoofed quadru- 

 peds— in(;luding the Proboscidia, the Amblypoda, and the 

 Diplarthra ; which latter are in turn separated into the two 

 sub-orders of I'erissodactyla and Artiodactyla — those which 

 divide the hoof, and those, like the horse, Avhicli Avalk prin- 

 cipally upon a single median hoof. In another direction 

 are developed the Unguicailataor clawed quadrupeds, which 

 are divided into the Bunotheria, the Carnivora, or meat- 

 eaters, the Edentata, the Chiroptera and the Rodentia. 



The human tjqje is nearer to the hoofed type than to the 

 clawed type, and branched oft' from the Condylarthra in a 

 separate direction. Man is not developed from any existiug 

 order of anthropoid a})es, though both belong to the sub- 



* Coi'YKiGiiT, 1889, l)y The New Ideal I'ublishiiig Co. 



