12 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTIOX. 



lives? Being eitlier cotemporary creations or more recent 

 developments, they ought to have been more perfect organi- 

 sations. If man was the last and most perfect emanation 

 of the DarAvinian theory, the parasites which trouble him,, 

 which are never seen without him, and which are ever most 

 numerous as we approach to the time of his first appear- 

 ance, being coeval -svith or of later creation than himself, 

 ought to be his superiors. The theory of progressive muta- 

 tion by natural selection in the struggle for life could surely 

 not have been in action when organisations of the highest 

 and lowest quality came into existence, at best, at one and 

 the same time. 



I come now to consider that branch of my subject which 

 more directly connects the Darwinian theory with ethno- 

 logy, that which makes the races of Man to proceed from 

 the family of Apes. In bodily form, at least, there is a 

 seeming approximation, but on examination it will soon 

 be seen that the discrepancy is far more striking than the 

 similitude. The most highly endowed ape, in fact, far less 

 resembles man than a hog does an elephant, or a badger a bear. 

 The disparities are, indeed, unspeakable in their extent. In 

 all essential respects, apes are quadrupeds, and nothmg 

 better. Kature furnishes them spontaneously Avith food and 

 clothing, and they continue their race in the same way as all 

 other terrestrial mammals. A monkey can walk on his hind 

 legs, but his pace is shambling ; it costs him an effort to walk, 

 and he has to balance himself to preserve his equilibrium. 

 He stands on his hind legs more easily than a dog, but not 

 better than a bear, and his more natural movement is on 

 all-fours like that of any ordinary quadruped, and his most 

 natural is climbing. 



All the species of apes are exclusively frugivorous, but all 

 the races of man are omnivorous. The abode of man is the 

 stable earth, but of apes the forest. Were there no trees 

 there would be no apes, and, m fact, in treeless regions they 

 have no existence. Man, of one race or another, is the denizen 



