THE ORIGIN OF MAN 109 



whole family of lemurs, monkeys, and apes have such 

 differences of structure from man that they must be 

 regarded as separate developments. In other words, 

 man has a very remote common ancestor, of three or 

 four million years ago, with the lemurs, monkeys, and 

 apes; but our ancestor never passed through any of 

 those stages. These writers, of course, hold that man 

 was evolved from a primitive mammal, but that his 

 ancestors were not at any time so close to the monkeys 

 as to run the risk of being classified with them. 



I am only mentioning these theories for the infor- 

 mation of the reader. The grounds of them do not 

 seem to me convincing, and I will follow the usual 

 view. This is, shortly, that a branch of the primitive 

 insect-eating mammals remained in the trees after 

 the Chalk Period, when most of the others descended 

 upon the freer earth. They developed in the direction 

 of the monkeys; whether through the lemur stage, or 

 whether the lemurs are (as seems probable) a side- 

 line, we need not inquire here. Tv/o or three million 

 years ago an enormous family of monkeys spread over 

 Europe (as far north as central England), Asia, and 

 Africa; and a branch passed into America. One 

 section of this family became the man-like apes, and 

 man's ancestors must have been so closely related to 

 these apes that, if one were produced to-day, we would 

 superficially pronounce it a man-like ape. 



But how or why did our branch of the family get 

 that increase of brain which was the beginning of 



