206 TBE DESCENT OF MAN 



produced a manlike creature, ■with, all the distinctive" char- 

 acters proper to tte Old World division; losing at the same 

 time all its own distinctive characters. There can, conse- 

 quently, hardly be a doubt that man is an offshoot from the 

 Old World Simian stem; and that, under a genealogical 

 point of view, he must be classed with the Catarrhine 

 division." 



The anthropomorphous apes, namely, the gorilla, chim- 

 panzee, orang, and hylobates, are by most naturalists sepa- 

 rated from the other Old World monkeys, as a distinct sub- 

 group. I am aware that Grratiolet, relying on the structure 

 of the brain, does not admit the existence of this sub-group, 

 and no doubt it is a broken one. Thus the orang, as Mr. 

 St. Gr. Mivart remarks," "is one of the most peculiar and 

 aberrant forms to be found in the Order." The remaining 

 non-anthropomorphous Old World monkeys are again di- 

 vided by some naturalists into two or three smaller sub- 

 groups; the genus Semnopithecus, with its peculiar saccu- 

 lated stomach, being the type of one such sub-group. But 

 it appears, from M. Graudry's wonderful discoveries in Attica, 

 that during the Miocene period a form existed there which 

 connected Semnopithecus and Macacus; and this probably 

 illustrates the manner in which the other and higher groups 

 were once blended together. 



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 Catarrhine group, but in other 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 



" This ia nearly the same classification as that provisionally adopted by 

 Mr. St, George Mivart ("Transact. Philosoph. Soc," ISeY, p. 300), who, after 

 separating the Lemuridee, divides the remainder of the Primates into the 

 Hominidae, the Simiadffi which answer to the Catarrhines, the Cebidse, and 

 the Hapalidse — these two latter groups answering to the Platyrhiaea. Mr. 

 Mivart still abides by the same view; see "Nature," 1871, p. 481. 



IS "Transact. Zoolog. Soc," vol. vi. 186T, p 214. 



