Page:Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature.djvu/130

124 is no existing link between Man and the Gorilla, but do not forget that there is a no less sharp line of demarcation, a no less complete absence of any transitional form, between the Gorilla and the Orang, or the Orang and the Gibbon. I say, not less sharp, though it is somewhat narrower. The structural differences between Man and the Man-like apes certainly justify our regarding him as constituting a family apart from them; though, inasmuch as he differs less from them than they do from other families of the same order, there can be no justification for placing him in a distinct order.

And thus the sagacious foresight of the great lawgiver of systematic zoology, Linnæus, becomes justified, and a century of anatomical research brings us back to his conclusion, that man is a member of the same order (for which the Linnæan term ought to be retained) as the Apes and Lemurs. This order is now divisible into seven families, of about equal systematic value: the first, the, contains Man alone; the second, the , embraces the old world apes; the third, the , all new world apes, except the Marmosets; the fourth, the , contains the Marmosets; the fifth, the , the Lemurs—from which Cheiromys should probably be excluded to form a sixth distinct family, the ; while the seventh, the , contains only the flying Lemur Galeopithecus,—a strange form which almost touches on the Bats, as the Cheiromys puts on a Rodent clothing, and the Lemurs simulate Insectivora.

Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this—leading us 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