THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST 
VoL. KAAL July, 1897. 367 
ON THE AFFINITIES OF TARSIUS: A CONTRIBU- 
TION TO THE PHYLOGENY OF THE PRIMATES. 
By CHARLES EARLE. 
In order to form a just estimate of the zoological rank of an 
animal in the system we must take into consideration its 
whole organization and development. Any system of classifi- 
cation which only considers one set of organs at the exclusion 
of the others will probably lead to false ideas as to the system- 
atic position of the animal in question. In endeavoring to 
determine the relationship of Tarsius to the other members of 
the Primates, we are met at the outset with that great diffi- 
culty in morphological enquiry to decide between characters 
due to inheritance and those arising from convergence. The 
phenomenon of homoplasy is being recognized more and more 
by naturalists, and it is only by a complete knowledge of the 
palzogenetic history of a phylum that we can decide surely 
whether certain characters of the skeleton, common to it and 
‘to other phyla, are homogenetic or homoplastic in their origin. 
Tarsius stands preéminently among Mammals as one of the 
most interesting of generalized types, for in this genus we have 
an animal whose assemblage of characters relates it on one 
hand to the Apes, and on the other surely to the Lemurs. 
The question arises, is the position tenable if I maintain that 
as Tarsius exhibits many fundamental structural peculiarities 
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