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Show 4()0 T 11 1•: i\{ 0 N 0 G E N I S 1' S A N D the last catastrophe, which is supposed to have given the present shape to our RCas and our continents." This is confirmed by a curious obscrvaLion of Marcel de Serrcs,m that while, as yet, monkeys have been found "only on the ancient continent in the fossil state, it is uniquely in the humatile state they have been recognized on the new." It is, therefore, no longer contestable, that fossil monlceys exist, and in abundance. Other genera, without question, will be discovered in the ratio that portions of the cartl1, and by far the mo~:~t extensive, become accessible to the geologist's hammer. Those barbarous regions which living anthropoid monkeys now inhabitviz.: Guinea, Congo, and Loango, where the Chimpanzee (Troglodyte8 niger); the Gaboon river-lands, where tho Gorilla Gina; and th' forests of Borneo and Sumatra, where two, or even three [supra, AoAssrzs' I,E'l'T.Elt], species of the Orang-utan (8aty1·us rufus, and 8aty1·us bicolo1·); arc found 172 - being at present wholly inaccessible to geological investigation, it is premature to affirm or deny tho cxistouco of such anthropomorphous grades, as tho above, between the "gcu us Homo" or bimanes, and those lower genera of quadrumanes all'cady known to palroontology, in the fo ssil sLate. Such a discovcl'y wonld fortify, although its absence docs not affect, the propositions I am about to submit. Leaving aside Do Lamark's much-abused development-theory, 1' 3 all natnmlists agrcc ·that, whether in the incommensurable cycles of geological time a.ntcrior to our planet's present condition, or during the ch ronologically-indefinable period that mankind have been its later occupants, there is a manifest p1·ogress·ion of organism upwards fi·om tho l{acliata to the Articulata, from these to the Mollusca and agai1 ft·om those last to tho Vertebrata. m At tho summit of ~ceLebrated animals, after ascending once more tl1rough the Fishes the Reptiles, the Birds, and the Mammifers, stands Man, himself Lhc highest of the mammalian division-" sole roprcscnLativc of his genus" if Prof. Owen pleases, but composed, notwithstandino-, of many distinct types, each subdivisible into many raees. 0 Now, wh.cther we look up or down the tableau of living nature, or drag ont of tho rocky bowels of our earth the whole series of fossil animals known to p~lreontology, nearest to mankind, among mam- 16m2- 7C. o&rnogollie de Jfo'ise compar!es aux faits g6ologique& , Paris, 8vo , 2d od ., 1841 ,· I , pp . ::: CnENU, Encyclop6die d'Ilistoire Naturelle, vol. "Quadrumtmos," Primates; pp. 30-52. m ~onerously explai~od by liALlHlMAN, Recent Frethwaler Mollusca (supra), pp. 6-8. " 00 tho R~glle Ammal de M. le Baron Cuvier, dispos6 m Tableaux mtthodique1 par I AouiLL.E COMT.E, Paris, fol. 1840; 1st Plato, "Introduction." · TilE POLYGENJSTS. 46L malia, in every feature of organization, spring up the Monlceys in bold relief; as Man's closest sequence in the descending scale of zoological g1·adation ,· and, like wise, so far as science yet has ascertained, as one of Man's immediate precursors iu the ascending line of our planet's chronology. Each of these two points, however, rcqniros Rome elucidation, ht order to eschew dcclnctions that arc not mine. For tho first, one reference will explain the view I concur in; it is Gervais's.175 ''We know nothing well except through comparison, and, in or lcr to compare objects correctly, one must begin by placing th m ncar together. This is not to say that Man is a Monkey, and still less that a Monkey is a Man, even degraded; because, upon studying with care the one and the other, it will be recognize i without difliculty that if Man resembles the highest animals [the l.,rimatcs], through the totality of his organization, he differs from them above all in the details; and that, even more endowed than the o-rcatcr number of these in almost every l'CApcct, he surpasses them 0 csscutially by the very perfection of his structure. His brain, as well as his intelligence, assigns him a rank apart. He is indeed, as Ovid says, Sanctius his animal, montisquo capacius altro. It is well known, on the other hand, that, to Linnrcus and his contemporaries, the limits of genus were much less Jl::trl·owed than they are for naturalists of our day. Tho generic union of Man and of other [sic] Monkeys would be, therefore, at tho present state of science, entirely contrary to the rules of classification. * * * "(Monkeys) are easily recognized by thci r organization, of which th principal trrtits accord with those that the human genus displays in such an elevated degree of perfection. Their brain and their other deeply-placed organs; thei1· exterior appearance, and, especially, the form of their head; the position and number of their teats; thci t' thumbs at the sup rior members, more fi·cqucntly than not opposable to the other fingers; their station approaching more and more the vertical, but without evcJ·rcaclling it completely; and a certain community of intellectual aptitudes; everything, in tl10sc animals, announces an incontestable rcsemblaucc with Man, and a sopcriority as t·egards other quadrupeds. Albeit, this similitude dimiuisl1es in proportion as one descends through the series of genom that compose the family of Monkeys; and, whilst cvc1' prcset·ving Lho fundamental traits of the group to which they belong, Lhe lowest species [the Ouistites, for instance] show by their inLolligcnce as much as by their brain, in their m lliat. Nat. des Mamm((er~·'• pp. 4(), and 7...g, |