MAN AS THE TYPE OF A DISTINCT ORDER. 201 



derived, because they involve marked differences in the animal economy, 

 and because it is felt that a modification, in itself of no great extent, leads 

 to most important results. Carrying out the principle of an increase in the 

 value of differential characters as we advance in the scale of being, it may 

 be affirmed that, upon legitimate zoological grounds, the organic conforma- 

 tion of Man, modelled, possibly, upon the same type as that of the Chim- 

 panzee or Orang, but modified, with a view to fit him for habits, manners, 

 and, indeed, a totality of active existence, indicative of a destiny and pur- 

 poses participated in neither by the Chimpanzee nor any other animal, 

 removes Man from the Quadrumana, not merely in a generic point of view, 

 but from the pale of the Primates, to an exclusive situation. The zoolo- 

 gical value of characters derived from structural modifications is commen- 

 surate with the results which they involve : let it then be shewn that Man, 

 though a cheiropod (hand-footed),* possesses structural modifications leading 

 to most important results, and our views are at once justified. If, however, 

 the class Mammalia be divided into sub-classes, or subordinate sections, 

 each section including orders, then there is no objection to the application 

 of the term Cheiropoda, Primates, or any other, to a section including the 

 orders Bimana and Quadrumana (except that it renders an arrangement 

 needlessly complicated) ; as terms, in themselves, are of little importance. 

 It is not against these that the argument is directed; but against the 

 establishment of the Primates as an order including the genera Man, 

 Monkey, and Bat, and, consequently, also, against the inclusion in the 

 order Cheiropoda, of Bimana (Man), Quadrumana (the Old- World Mon- 

 keys and Lemurs), and Pedimana (the American Monkeys and the Opos- 

 sums), as coequal families. It may be answered, that the term, Order, 

 as applied to Cheiropoda, has a much wider, a more comprehensive signi- 

 fication than is allowed it by Illiger or Cuvier, and that its subordinate 

 groups are of the same value as Cuvier's Orders : if so, the use of the term, 

 in any other sense than that attributed to it by the standard authorities, can 

 scarcely be justified.*!" 



* See " Observations on the opposable Power of the Thumb in various Mammals, by W. Ogilby, 

 Esq.," Proceedings Zool. Soc. L., 1836, p. 28. 



t Mr. Ogilby observes, that the order Erecta, of Illiger, is " founded upon metaphysical, rather 

 than physiological considerations; and destroys, at once, both the harmony and simplicity of his 

 arrangement. The pride of intellectual superiority and moral endowments has, indeed, frequently 

 induced naturalists to consider Man as forming a distinct and separate order by himself, and to fancy 

 that it would be degrading the lord of creation to associate him in the same group with the Apes and 

 the Monkeys (and, also, the Lemurs and Opossums) ; but such scientific weakness cannot destroy the 

 numerous affinities which actually characterize the structure of these animals, as compared with our 

 own, or blind the unprejudiced observer to the obvious relations which subsist between the Bimana 

 and the Quadrumana. The metaphysician and the divine may, without impropriety, consider Man 

 apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, and in relation only to his intellectual and moral nature : 

 but the naturalist must view him in a different light : anatomical structure and organic conformation 

 are the only principles which the zoologist can admit as the foundations of natural science ; and, in 

 this respect, Man is too closely connected with the Apes, and other Simiae, to admit of being placed 

 so widely apart from them as he has been in some recent classifications of mammals." " Les diverses 

 VOL. I. 2 D 



