remarked (18. Anthropological Review, April 1867, p. 236.), will no
doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies
will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more
civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape
as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian
and the gorilla.
With respect to the absence of fossil remains, serving to connect man
with his ape-like progenitors, no one will lay much stress on this fact
who reads Sir C. Lyell s discussion (19. Elements of Geology, 1865,
pp. 583-585. Antiquity of Man, 1863, p. 145.), where he shews that in
all the vertebrate classes the discovery of fossil remains has been a
very slow and fortuitous process. Nor should it be forgotten that those
regions which are the most likely to afford remains connecting man with
some extinct ape-like creature, have not as yet been searched by
geologists.
LOWER STAGES IN THE GENEALOGY OF MAN.
We have seen that man appears to have diverged from the Catarrhine or
Old World division of the Simiadae, after these had diverged from the
New World division. We will now endeavour to follow the remote traces
of his genealogy, trusting principally to the mutual affinities between
the various classes and orders, with some slight reference to the
periods, as far as ascertained, of their successive appearance on the
earth. The Lemuridae stand below and near to the Simiadae, and
constitute a very distinct family of the primates, or, according to
Haeckel and others, a distinct Order. This group is diversified and
broken to an extraordinary degree, and includes many aberrant forms. It
has, therefore, probably suffered much extinction. Most of the remnants
survive on islands, such as Madagascar and the Malayan archipelago,
where they have not been exposed to so severe a competition as they
would have been on well-stocked continents. This group likewise
presents many gradations, leading, as Huxley remarks (20. Man s Place
in Nature, p. 105.), insensibly from the crown and summit of the
animal creation down to creatures from which there is but a step, as it
seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental
mammalia. From these various considerations it is probable that the
Simiadae were originally developed from the progenitors of the existing
Lemuridae; and these in their turn from forms standing very low in the
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