Marsh Collection, Peabody Museum. 207 



apply to its simian population. The insuperable objection to 

 an African origin for the Cebidse is found in the complete 

 absence of any group of Primates, either fossil or recent, in the 

 tropics or any part of the Eastern Hemisphere, which exhibits 

 any near affinities with the New World apes. Africa is to-day 

 the congenial home of a large and varied lemuroid and simian 

 population in which species of the highest and lowest degree 

 exist side by side. Something is known, moreover, of the 

 ancient representatives of this Primate fauna from the Ter- 

 tiaries of Europe and Asia, but whether we consider the living 

 or extinct forms, not a single species has yet been brought to 

 light among them which does not proclaim its distinctive 

 relationship and bear the unmistakable stamp of its affinities 

 with the Primates of the Old World. Among the monkeys 

 and apes, this is so positive that no one has ever ventured to 

 assert the contrary. 



In like manner, the fossil monkeys of South America exhibit 

 the closest relations to those species now living there. Ame- 

 ghino has found the remains of apes in the Santa Cruz Miocene 

 of Patagonia, which are closely allied to, and hardly distinguish- 

 able from, the living Cebus of the Amazonian tropics. They 

 exhibit no traces of relationship with any species inhabiting 

 Africa. Any direct connection between the Cercopithecidse 

 and the Cebidee may be dismissed, therefore, as utterly unten- 

 able and unsupported by a single fragment or vestige of evidence. 

 Neither can it be logically argued that the Cebidae, originating 

 in Africa, migrated thence in a body to the New World. No 

 assignable reason can be given why all the genera, species, and 

 individuals of so large and varied an assemblage as the New 

 World apes must have been, even prior to the Miocene, should 

 have suddenly quitted the home of their birth, without 

 leaving behind a single representative or trace which would 

 furnish a clue to their former presence in a region now so well 

 fitted, apparently,, for ape existence. Any such vestige, however, 

 is singularly absent, and from whatever point of view we choose 

 to regard it, such a hypothesis appears simply impossible. 



In connection with the evidence which I have already brought 

 forward in favor of the North American origin of the Edentata, * 

 a similar origin for the South American Primates, which is the 

 only alternative hypothesis conceivable, is placed upon an 

 extremely probable, if not absolutely secure, foundation, and is 

 entitled to infinitely greater consideration than any purely con- 

 jectural origin of these forms, wholly without evidence in its 

 support. I have formerly suggested that the so-called Litop- 

 terna were direct derivatives of Meniscotherium of our Wasatch 



* The Ganodonta and their Relationship to the Edentata, Bull. Amer. Mus. 

 Nat. Hist., vol. ix, pp. 59-110, 1897. 



