Genealogy of Man 123 
tative, not qualitative, he has already shown. Very instructive in 
this connection is the reference to the enormous difference in mental 
powers in another class. No one would draw from the fact that the 
cochineal insect (Coccus) and the ant exhibit enormous differences in 
their mental powers, the conclusion that the ant should therefore 
be regarded as something quite distinct, and withdrawn from the 
class of insects altogether. 
Darwin next attempts to establish the specific genealogical tree of 
man, and carefully weighs the differences and resemblances between 
the different families of the Primates. The erect position of man is 
an adaptive character, just as are the various characters referable to 
aquatic life in the seals, which, notwithstanding these, are ranked as 
a mere family of the Carnivores. The following utterance is very 
characteristic of Darwin!: “If man had not been his own classifier, 
he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his 
own reception.” In numerous characters not mentioned in systematic 
works, in the features of the face, in the form of the nose, in the 
structure of the external ear, man resembles the apes. The arrange- 
ment of the hair in man has also much in common with the apes; as 
also the occurrence of hair on the forehead of the human embryo, 
the beard, the convergence of the hair of the upper and under arm 
towards the elbow, which occurs not only in the anthropoid apes, 
but also in some American monkeys. Darwin here adopts Wallace’s 
explanation of the origin of the ascending direction of the hair in the 
forearm of the orang,—that it has arisen through the habit of holding 
the hands over the head in rain. But this explanation cannot be 
maintained when we consider that this disposition of the hair is widely 
distributed among the most different mammals, being found in the 
dog, in the sloth, and in many of the lower monkeys. 
After further careful analysis of the anatomical characters Darwin 
reaches the conclusion that. the New World monkeys (Platyrrhine) 
may be excluded from the genealogical tree altogether, but that man 
is an offshoot from the Old World monkeys (Catarrhine) whose 
progenitors existed as far back as the Miocene period. Among these 
Old World monkeys the forms to which man shows the greatest 
resemblance are the anthropoid apes, which, like him, possess neither 
tail nor ischial callosities. The platyrrhine and catarrhine monkeys 
have their primitive ancestor among extinct forms of the Lemuridae. 
Darwin also touches on the question of the original home of the 
human race and supposes that it may have been in Africa, because 
it is there that man’s nearest relatives, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, 
are found. But he regards speculation on this point as useless. It is 
remarkable that, in this connection, Darwin regards the loss of the 
1 Descent of Man, p. 231. 
