Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/850

830 with a dog's snout, of which numerous species inhabit the most of Africa.

The Old World monkeys are related on one side to the lemurs, and on the other side to the ungulates. The former relationship is clearly admitted by Prof. Haeckel and Mr. Cope. M. Haeckel's argument, which is based chiefly on the conformation of the placenta, does not carry a strong conviction. Mr. Cope's rests chiefly on the conformation of the teeth, and is more solid. Mr. Huxley does not say that the monkeys are descended from the lemurs, but his descriptions suggest it. M. Vogt, as we have seen, rejects this genealogy, as also does M. Schmidt. The relationship with the ungulates is admitted by M. Gaudry, and is a consequence of the one that he has determined between the lemurs and the ungulates. In general, the Adapis and the Aplelotherium establish the communication on the former side, the point of junction being at the Eocene origin of the perissodactylic branch of the ungulates. On the latter side we have only one genus still known, the Oreopithecus of Gervais, which in dentition resembles the Chæropotamus, a genus of the Suidæ, or the artiodactylic branch of the ungulates. In return, there are genera of the ungulates belonging to the same stock of the Suidæ, or one nearly allied to it, which have marked resemblances with the monkeys. These are the Cebochærus, or hog-monkey, of Gervais, the Acotherulum, and the Hyracotherium of Owen. It is also to be remarked that in his general demonstration of the relation of the preceding species with the ungulates, M. Gaudry does not separate the lemurs from the monkeys, as if, from the paleontological point of view—that is, in the ancient species—the two were confounded.

Assuredly this is a very slight basis on which to found a derivation of the monkeys, and ultimately of man, from the ungulates. Yet the hypothesis has been heard; M. Vogt seems disposed to accept it, and M. Schmidt concludes a chapter in his book with the words: "The monkeys have had a very distinct double origin; the American branch had ancestors of insectivorous forms, and the Europo-Asiatic branch, including the anthropomorphs, ancestors with pachydermatous forms. We are thus near the question of the pachydermatic origin of our own primitive ancestors."

If this be so, the catarrhinian monkeys are dispossessed of their filiation with the lemurs. I confess I can not make up my mind to accept this idea. The lemurs are to me primates, quadrumana, the lowest of the order, and as such the ones which have all the chances of having engendered the others. The theory of the descent of man from the hog does not seduce me.

I am an anatomist and craniologist, and will allow no one to cast doubt on the importance which I attach to the smallest