third, the PLATYRHINI, all new-world apes, except the Marmosets; the
fourth, the ARCTOPITHECINI, contains the Marmosets; the fifth, the
LEMURINI, the Lemurs--from which 'Cheiromys' should probably be excluded
to form a sixth distinct family, the CHEIROMYINI; while the seventh, the
GALEOPITHECINI, 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 the
placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had foreseen the
arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his
intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves,
admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust.

These are the chief facts, this the immediate conclusion from them to
which I adverted in the commencement of this Essay. The facts, I
believe, cannot be disputed; and if so, the conclusion appears to me to
be inevitable.

But if Man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes
than they are from one another--then it seems to follow that if any
process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and
families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of
causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of Man. In other
words, if it could be shown that the Marmosets, for example, have arisen
by gradual modification of the ordinary Platyrhini, or that both
Marmosets and Platyrhini are modified ramifications of a primitive