xii TtfE ORDER PRIMATES 155 



immensity of others, different in form, characters, and mode 

 of life, which have peopled the earth through vast ages of 

 time, and to which numerically our existing forms are but 

 infinitesimally small, and that the knowledge we already 

 possess of great numbers fully justifies the expectation of an 

 enormous further advance in this direction. In the time of 

 Linnaeus the existence in any past time of a species having 

 no longer living representatives on the earth, though perhaps 

 the speculation of a few philosophical minds, had not been 

 received among the certainties of science, and at all events 

 found no place in the great work we are now considering. 



In the twelfth edition of the Systema Naturae we find the 

 class MAMMALIA divided into seven orders : I. Primates, 

 II. Bruta, III. Ferce, IV. Glires, V. Pecora, VI. Belluce, 

 VII. Cete. These orders contain forty genera without any 

 intermediate subdivisions. The genera are again divided into 

 species, of which the total number is 220. 



The first order, PRIMATES, contains four genera: Homo, 

 Simia, Lemur, and Vespertilio. 



The vexed question of man's place in the zoological system 

 was thus settled by Linnaeus. He belongs to the class 

 Mammalia, and the order Primates, the same order which 

 includes all known monkeys, lemurs, and bats : he differs only 

 generically from these animals. But then we must remember 

 that the Linnsean genera were not our genera ; they correspond 

 usually to what we call families, sometimes to entire orders. 

 So that practically man's position is much the same as that to 

 which, after several vicissitudes, as his separation as an order 

 by Blumenbach and Cuvier, or as a sub-class by Owen, he has 

 returned in the systems of nearly all the zoologists of the 

 present day who treat of him as a subject for classification upon 

 zoological and not metaphysical grounds. 



Yet since the time of Linnaeus the whole science of 

 Anthropology has been created. There is certainly an 

 attempt at the division of the species Homo sapiens into six 

 varieties in the Systema Naturce, but it has scarcely any 

 scientific basis. Zoological Anthropology may be said to have 

 commenced with Blumenbach, who, it is interesting to recall 

 as an evidence of the rapid growth of the science, was a 



