194 TEE ZOOLOGIST. 



they might with equal plausibility describe some naturalists as 

 having once belonged to that community of leisured Athenians, 

 who, we read, devoted their time " either to tell, or to hear some 

 new thing"; it is the evolutionist who is most scandalised by 

 some of the current pseudo-evolutionary guesses. 



In the Mammalia, though Mr. Sedgwick does not devote too 

 many pages to his order " Primates," he deals with it in a most 

 suggestive and interesting spirit. He recognizes four families — 

 Hapalidcs, Cebiclce, Cercopithecidce, and Anthropomorphidce (Si- 

 miidm), in which he places Homo; and he divides the human 

 race into three primary groups — Negroid, Mongolian, Caucasian. 

 Whether this is a permanent anthropological classification or 

 not, but few will disagree with the remark, and one which 

 constructors of genealogical trees may be asked to notice, that 

 " it is a striking commentary on the attempts of modern 

 naturalists to discover the pedigrees of different species of 

 animals that, with our relatively full knowledge of man, his- 

 torical, anatomical, and ethnological, we are unable to agree 

 upon a zoological classification of him which shall show the 

 consanguinity of the different races." Our author concludes the 

 subject, and also this excellent volume, by two eulogistic notices 

 of our genus by Shakespeare and one of the Hebrew Psalmists ; 

 but is it not probable that even intellectually we take too high a 

 view of the capacities of Homo in comparison with those of 

 some other animals of which we do, and can only know, at pre- 

 sent, so little ? Is it impossible for an evolutionist to imagine 

 that the present mammalian age, with even Homo, may, in some 

 undreamed and unimagined futurity, be relegated in importance 

 to one great evolutionary succession to the Eeptilian era as we 

 think of it to-day ? And this is not materialism, but its 

 antithesis. There can be no cessation in the progress of 

 evolution ; stability may be apparent, but finality is beyond 

 the bounds of the conception. To use the words of a recent 

 writer : — " The mysterious battle, physical, moral, mental, 

 spiritual, proceeds and must proceed for ever. Time is cheap, 

 and we have all eternity before us" (' Hibbert Journal,' April, 

 1905). 



