THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



pointed towards the Macacus-like long-tailed 

 monkeys. These characters could be inherited 

 only from the archetype, and this_Jyge_aga_iri 

 could only have inherited them from some still 

 older type, which had a general and much great- 

 er resemblance to the majority of the other mon- 

 keys. That there was once upon a time a cer- 

 tain ancestor who had an externally visible long 

 tail is still evidenced by man himself. Not only 

 is man in the tailed stage to this day, though the 

 tail vertebrae are no longer externally visible, 

 but these are certainly still better developed in 

 man than in the anthropoid apes. Furthermore, 

 the human embryo in the mother's womb once 

 more reveals the persistency of that mysterious 

 biogenetic law. It has a plainly, visible external 

 tail. In exceptional cases this "embryo tail" is 

 also preserved in adults, and in some cases we 

 have those abnormal "tail men," whose existence 

 has often been doubted, but who nevertheless 

 exist. There is no reason why we should not as- 

 sume that certain Macacus-like types, preceding 

 the human type, carried a genuine tail for a con- 

 stant characteristic. So far as we can judge 

 from fossil remains of bones, genuine long-tailed 

 monkeys, similar to those in present Asia, were 

 already in existence in the middle of the Tertiary 



57 



