136 " The Descent of Man" 



But this is not the place, nor have I the space to criticise the 

 various special theories of descent. One, however, must receive par- 

 ticular notice. According to Ameghino, the South American monkeys 

 (PithecuIites)from the oldest Tertiary of the Pampas are the forms from 

 which have arisen the existing American monkeys on the one hand, 

 and on the other, the extinct South American Homunculidae, which 

 are also small forms. From these last, anthropoid apes and man 

 have, he believes, been evolved. Among the progenitors of man, 

 Ameghino reckons the form discovered by him (Tetraprothomo), 

 from which a South American primitive man, Homo pampaeus, might 

 be directly evolved, while on the other hand all the lower Old World 

 monkeys may have arisen from older fossil South American forms 

 (Clenia^.tidae), the distribution of which may be explained by the 

 bridge formerly existing between South America and Africa, as may 

 be the derivation of all existing human races from Homo pampaeus 1 . 

 The fossil forms discovered by Ameghino deserve the most minute 

 investigation, as does also the fossil man from South America of 

 which Lehmann-Nitsche 2 has made a thorough study. 



It is obvious that, notwithstanding the necessity for fitting man's 

 line of descent into the genealogical tree of the Primates, especially 

 the apes, opinions in regard to it differ greatly in detail. This could 

 not be otherwise, since the different Primate forms, especially the 

 fossil forms, are still far from being exhaustively known. But one 

 thing remains certain, — the idea of the close relationship between 

 man and monkeys set forth in Darwin's Descent of Man. Only 

 those who deny the many points of agreement, the sole basis of 

 classification, and thus of a natural genealogical tree, can look upon 

 the position of Darwin and Haeckel as antiquated, or as standing 

 on an insufficient foundation. For such a genealogical tree is nothing 

 more than a summarised representation of what is known in regard 

 to the degree of resemblance between the different forms. 



Darwin's work in regard to the descent of man has not been 

 surpassed ; the more we immerse ourselves in the study of the 

 structural relationships between apes and man, the more is our path 

 illumined by the clear light radiating from him, and through his 

 calm and deliberate investigation, based on a mass of material in 

 the accumulation of which he has never had an equal. Darwin's 

 fame will be bound up for all time with the unprejudiced investiga- 

 tion of the question of all questions, the descent of the human race. 



1 See Araeghino's latest paper, "Notaa preliminares sobre el Tetraprothomo aryentinus," 

 etc. Armies del Museo national de Buenos Aires, xvi. pp. 107 — 242, 1907. 



a " Nouvelles recherches sur la formation pampeenne et rhomme fossile de la Republique 

 Argentine." Rivista del Museo de la Plata, T. xiv. pp. 193 — 488. 



