326 The American Naturalist. [April, 
descended directly from the lemurs without the intervention 
of the Simiidae. I have, on the conirary, expressed’, and now 
maintain as a working hypothesis, that the Anthropomorpha 
were descended from the Eocene Lemuroids. In my system! 
the Anthropomorpha includes the two families Hominidae 
and Simiidae. The sole difference between these families is 
seen in the structure of the posterior foot ; the Simiidae hav- 
ing the hallux opposable, while in the Hominidae the hallux 
is not opposable. This is not a strong character, since it — 
depends on a slight difference in the form of the entocunel- } 
form bone. In some vertebrates, as the tree frogs, the same 
and similar characters (genus Phyllomedusa) are notregarded = 
as of family value. It is then highly probable that Homo is 
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descended from some form of the Anthropomorpha now extinct, 
and probably unknown at present, although we do not yet 
know all the characters of some extinct supposed Simiidae, of 
which fragments only remain to us. It cannot now be deter- 
mined whether man and the Simiidae were both descended 
from a genus with opposable hallux, or without opposable 
hallux, or whether from a genus presenting an intermediate 
character in this respect. This genus was, in any case, distinct 
from either of the two existing genera of Simiidae, Simia : 
and Hylobates, since these present varied combinations of a 
anthropoid resemblances and differences, of generic and speci- 
fic value. 
Professor Virchow has recently* thrown down the guage to 
the evolutionary anthropologists by asserting that “ scientific 
anthropology begins with living races,” adding “that the first 
step in the construction of the doctrine of transformism willbe 
the explanation of the way the human races have been © 
formed,” etc. These two assertions are inconsistent, since the 
only way of solving the latter problem will be by the discovery 
of the ancestral races, which are extinct. The ad captandum 
remarks of the learned professor as to deriving an Aryan from 
ê American Naturalist, 1885, p. 467. 
- 7 Origin of the Fittest, 1887, p. 346, from pres Naturalist, 1885, p. 346, wh 
the classification of the Taxeopoda should be in a foot-note; loc. cit., 1889, cull 
* Popular Science Monthly, Jan. 1893, p. 373, translated. 
