the lust catastrophe, which, is supposed to have given the present
shape to our seas and our continents.”
This is confirmed by a curious observation of Marcel de Serres,171
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 monkeys exist,
and in abundance. Other genera, without question, will be discovered
in the ratio that portions of the earth, and by far the most
extensive, become accessible to the geologist’s hammer. Those
barbarous regions which living anthropoid monkeys now inhabit —
viz.: Guinea, Congo, and Loango, where the Chimpanzee (Troglodytes
niger); the Gaboon river-lands, where the Gorilla Gina; and
the forests of Borneo and Sumatra, where two, or even three [supra,
A gass iz s’ l etter] , species of the Orang-utan (,Satyrus rufus, and
Satyrus bicolor)-, are found172—being at present wholly inaccessible
to geological investigation, it is premature -to affirm or deny the
existence of such anthropomorphous grades, as the above, between
the “ genus Homo” or bimanes, and those lower genera of quadrumanes
already known to palæontology, In the fossil state. Such
a discovery would fortify, although its absence does not affect, the
propositions I am about to submit.
Leaving aside De Lamark’s much-abused development-theory,m
all naturalists agree that, whether in the incommensurable cycles of
geological time anterior to our planet’s present condition, or during
the chronologically-indefinable period that mankind have been its
later occupants, there is a manifest progression of organism upwards
from the Radiata to the Articulata, from these to the Mollusca, and
again from these last to the Vertebrata.174 At the summit of verte-
brated animals, after ascending once more through the Fishes the
Reptiles, the Birds, and the Mammifers, stands Man, himself the
highest of the mammalian division—“ sole representative of his
genus” if Prof. Owen pleases, but composed, notwithstanding, of
many distinct types, each subdivisible into many races.
How, whether we look up or down the tableau of living nature, or
drag out of the rocky bowels of our earth the whole series of fossil
animals known to palæontology, nearest to mankind, among mam-
Cosmogonie de Moïse comparées aux fails géologiques, Paris, 8vo, 2d éd., 1841; I, pp.
172 Ch e h u , Encyclopédie dHistoire Naturelle, vol. “ Quadrumanes,” Primates; pp. 30-62.
173 Generously explained by H a ld em a n , Recent Freshwater Mollusca (supra), pp. 6 - 8 .
174 See the Règne Animal de M. le Baron Cuvier, disposé en Tableaux méthodiques par L
A c h il l e Comte, Paris, fol. 1 8 4 0 ; 1st Plate, “ Introduction.”
malia, in every feature of organization, spring up the Monkeys in
bold relief; as Man’s closest sequence in the descending scale of zoo
logical gradation',' and, likewise, so far as science yet has ascertained,
as one of Man’s immediate precursors in the ascending line of our
planet’s chronology. Each of these two points, however, requires
some elucidation, in order to eschew deductions that are not mine.
For the first, one reference will explain the view I concur in; it is
Gervais’s.175
“ Y e know nothing well except through comparison, and, in order
to compare objects correctly, one must begin by placing them near
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 reeognized-without difficulty
that if Man resembles the highest animals [the Primates],
through the totality of his organization, he differs from them above
all in the -details; and that, even more endowed than the greater
number of these in almost eveiy respect, he surpasses them essentially
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, mentisque capacius altse.
It is well known, on the other hand, that, to Linnams and his contemporaries,
the limits of genus were much less narrowed than they
are for naturalists of our day. The generic union of Man and of other
[sic-] Monkeys would be, therefore, at the present state of science,
entirely contrary to the rules of classification. * * * “(Monkeys) are
easily recognized by their organization, of which the principal traits
accord with those that the human genus displays in such an elevated
degree of perfection. Their brain and their other deeply-placed
organs; their exterior appearance, and, especially, the form of their
head; the position and number of their teats; their thumbs at the
superior members,_ more frequently than not opposable to the other
fingers;?their station approaching more and more the vertical, but
without ever reaching it completely; and a certain community of intellectual
aptitudes; everything, in these animals, announces an incontestable
resemblance with Man, and a superiority as regards other
quadrupeds. Albeit, this similitude diminishes in proportion as one
descends through the series of genera that compose the family of
Monkeys; and, whilst ever preserving the fundamental traits of the
group to which they belong, the lowest species [the Ouistites, for instance]
show by their intelligence as much as by their brain, in their
176 Hist. Nat. des Mammiferis, pp. 49, and 7-8.