150 THE DESCENT OP MAN. 



from M. Gaudry's wonderful discoveries in Attica, that during 

 the Miocene period a form existed there, which connected Sem- 

 nopithecus and Macacus; and this probably illustrates the man- 

 ner in which the other and higher groups were once blended to- 

 gether. 



If the anthropomorphous apes be admitted to form a natural 

 sub-group, then as man agrees with them, not only in all those 

 characters which he possesses in 'common with the whole Catar- 

 hine group, but in oth-sr peculiar characters, such as the absence 

 of a tail and of callosities, and in general appearance, we may 

 infer that some ancient member of the anthropomorphous sub- 

 group gave birth to man. It is not probable that, through the 

 law of analogous variation, a member of one of the other lower 

 sub-groups should have given rise to a man-like creature, re- 

 sembling the higher anthropomorphous apes in so many respects. 

 No doubt man, in comparison with most of his allies, has under- 

 gone an extraordinary amount of modification, chiefly in conse- 

 quence of the great development of his brain and his erect po- 

 sition; nevertheless, we should bear in mind that he "is but one 

 "of several exceptional forms of Primates."" 



Every naturalist, who believes in the principle of evolution, 

 will grant that the two main divisions of the Simiadse, namely 

 the Catarhine and Platyrhine monkeys, with their sub-groups, 

 have all proceeded from some one extremely ancient progenitor, 

 The early descendants of this progenitor, before they had diverged 

 to any considerable extent from each other, would still have 

 formed a single natural group; but some of the species or incip- 

 ient genera would have already begun to indicate by their diverg- 

 ing characters the future distinctive marks of the Catarhine and 

 Platyrhine divisions. Hence the members of this supposed an- 

 cient group would not have been so uniform in their dentition, 

 or in the structure of their nostrils, as are the existing Catarhine 

 monkeys in one way and the Platyrhines in another way, but 

 would have resembled in this respect the allied Lemuridae, which 

 differ greatly from each other in the form of their muzzles,'" 

 and to an extraordinary degree in their dentition. 



The Catarhine and Platyrhine monkeys agree in a multitude of 

 characters, as is shown by their unquestionably belonging to one 

 and the same Order. The many characters which they possess 

 in common can hardly have been independently acquired by so 

 many distinct species; so that these characters must have been 

 inherited. But a naturalist would undoubtedly have ranked as 

 an ape or a monkey, an ancient form which possessed many char- 



" Mr. St. G. Mivart, 'Transact. Phil. Soc' 1867, p. 410. 

 " Messrs. Murie and Mivart on the Lemuroidea, 'Transact. Zoolog. 

 Soc." vol. vii. 1869, p. 5. 



