GENESIS OF MAN. 57 



to name this once continental, but now mostly submerged region, 

 Lemuria, a circumstance to which Haeckel has given special promi- 

 nence, by pointing out the many facts which conspire to justify us 

 in the conjecture that here may have existed the true " cradle of 

 the human race." The lemurs form the eighteenth stage in the 

 anthropogenetic line. 



From the lemurs to the true apes, the transition is comparatively 

 easy. They evidently developed out of the Br achy tar si, the Ste- 

 nops forming the nearest approach to a connecting link. 



Linnaeus, with almost prophetic ken, notwithstanding his dual- 

 istic proclivites, classed man with the apes, lemurs, and bats, in 

 his celebrated order, Primates. Blumenbach fancied he saw in the 

 human foot a pretext for rescuing man from this association, and 

 accordingly erected for him a separate order, which he called 

 Bimana (two-handed), distinguishing the apes, etc., as Quadru- 

 mana (four-handed). This classification was adopted by Cuvier, 

 and is the one which has generally prevailed among naturalists, 

 down to Huxley and Haeckel. Huxley, however, gave the whole 

 subject a complete re-investigation, and arrived at the conclusion 

 that Blumenbach's order Bimana cannot be maintained on anato- 

 mical grounds. He shows, in the most convincing manner, that 

 the distinctions alleged to exist between the posterior hands of 

 apes and the feet of man are apparent only, that they were based 

 on physiological and not on morphological considerations. The 

 apes are just as good bimana as men are, and men are just as 

 good quadrumana as the apes. In neither are the posterior limbs 

 in all respects homologous to the anterior. The tarsal bones are 

 differently arranged from the carpal bones, and there are three 

 distinct muscles serving to move the foot that are wholly wanting 

 in the hand. But all this is as true of the apes as of man. The 

 limited opposability of the great toe in man is only a functional 

 distinction. The muscles of opposability are all present ; they are 

 merely atrophied by disuse and adaptation to altered conditions. 

 Traces of this power are found in many savages, who hold on with 

 their toes to the branches of trees in the forests where they live, 

 and otherwise employ this posterior thumb in a variety of ways 

 which Europeans cannot imitate. There are, moreover, many 

 instances on record of men acquiring extraordinary dexterity in 

 the use of their toes. Every one in this country has seen the exhi- 



