THE 



AMERICAN JOURNALOFSCIENCE 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



Art. XLII. — Studies of Eocene Mammalia in the Marsh 

 Collection, Peabody Museum • by J. L. Wortman. 



[Continued from. p. 414.] 



Origin of the Primates. 



In any attempt at a consideration of the question of the 

 origin of the Primates, we are met almost at the very thresh- 

 old of our inquiry by such a lack of definite information as 

 effectually to bar our progress, in so far, at least, as positive or 

 decided results are concerned. The only course that is open 

 to us at present is to reason by induction and analogy, but it 

 may well be that this method will prove futile enough and 

 furnish a very unsafe guide in threading our way across this 

 unexplored waste in the knowledge of simian history. 



The first question of importance to discuss in this connection 

 is the probable location of the place of origin of the Primates, 

 and just here some welcome facts come to our aid. From the 

 abundant and well-attested records of paleobotany, we learn 

 first of all that a tropical vegetation nourished within the 

 Arctic Circle as late as the beginning of the Cretaceous, and 

 for reasons which will be presently given it appears highly 

 probable that this was one of the regions in which climatic 

 environment first presented sufficiently favorable conditions 

 for the beginnings of higher forms of plant life. In other 

 words, it was probably the original home of the Angiosperms, 

 or flowering plants. The existence of the higher types of 

 Mammalia was manifestly impossible before the appearance of 

 the necessary plants upon which they so largely depend for 

 food, and I shall therefore assume the existence of a close and 

 intimate relationship between the development of the one and 

 the origin of the other. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Yol. XV, No. 90.— June, 1903. 

 29 



