where there never have been apes, must necessarily have been peopled by means of migration.

The eminent professor of Geneva, moreover, always confines himself to a somewhat vague statement of his ideas relative to the genealogies which he thinks fit to attribute to the different groups of mankind.

III. Darwin and Haeckel have been bolder. The former has published an important work upon the Descent of Man, and the latter in his History of the Creation of Organised Beings has treated the same subject in detail, and given the genealogical table of our supposed ancestors, starting from the most simple known animals. The master and the disciple agree almost invariably, and it is to Haeckel himself that Darwin refers the reader who is curious to know the human genealogy in detail. Let us glance rapidly at the origin assigned to us by the German naturalist.

Haeckel considers as the first ancestor of all living beings the monera, which are nothing more than the amaba as understood by Dujardin. From this initial form man has reached the state in which we now find him, by passing through twenty-one typical transitory forms. In the present state of things our nearest neighbours are the anthropomorphous or tailless catarrhine apes, such as the orang, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, etc. All are sprung from the same stock, from the type of the tailed catarrhine apes, the latter are descended from the prosimic, a type which is now represented by the macaucos, the loris, etc. Next come the marsupials, which form the 17th stage of our evolution; further examination is useless.

Although the distance between anthropomorphous apes and man appears to be but small to Haeckel, he has nevertheless thought it necessary to admit the existence of an intermediate stage between ourselves and the most highly developed ape. This purely hypothetical being, of which not the slightest vestige has been found, is supposed to be detached from the tailless catarrhine apes, and to constitute the 21st stage of the modification which has led to the

human form, Haeckel calls it the ape-man, or the pithecoid man. He denies him the gift of articulate speech as well as the development of the intelligence and self-consciousness.

Darwin also admits the existence of this link between man and apes. He says nothing as to his intellectual faculties. On the other hand he traces out his physical portrait, basing his remarks upon a certain number of exceptional peculiarities observed in the human species, which he regards as so many phenomena of partial atavism. "The earliest ancestors of man," he says, "were without doubt once covered with hair; both sexes having beards; their ears were pointed and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail having the proper muscles. Their limbs and bodies were acted on by many muscles, which now only occasionally reappear in man, but which are still normally present in the quadrumana. The great artery and nerve of the humerus ran through a supracondyloid foramen. At this, or some earlier period, the intestine gave forth a much larger diverticulum or cœcum than that now existing. The foot, judging from the condition of the great toe in the foetus, was then prehensile, and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm forest-clad land; the males were provided with canine teeth which served as formidable weapons."

IV. In attributing a tail to our first direct ancestors Darwin connects him with the type of tailed catarrhines, and consequently removes him a stage backward in the scale of evolutions. The English naturalist is not satisfied to take his stand upon the ground of his own doctrines, and, like Haeckel, on this point places himself in direct variance with one of the fundamental laws which constitute the principal charms of Darwinism, whose force I am far from denying.

In fact, in the theory of Darwin, transmutations do not take place, either by chance or in every direction. They are ruled by certain laws which are due to the organisation

itself. If an organism is once modified in a given direction, it can undergo secondary or tertiary transmutations, but will still preserve the impress of the original. It is the law of permanent characterisation which alone permits Darwin to explain the filiation of groups, their characteristics and their numerous relations. It is by virtue of this law that all the descendants of the first mollusc have been molluscs; all the descendants of the first vertebrate have been vertebrates. It is clear that this constitutes one of the foundations of the doctrine.

It follows that two beings belonging to two distinct types can be referred to a common ancestor, whose characters were not clearly developed, but the one cannot be the descendant of the other.

Now man and apes present a very striking contrast in respect to type. Their organs, as I have already remarked, correspond almost exactly term for term; but these organs are arranged after a very different plan. In man they are so arranged that he is essentially a walker, while in apes they necessitate his being a climber just as strongly.

There is here an anatomical and mechanical distinction which had already been proved, as regards the inferior apes, by the works of Vicq d'Azyr, Lawrence, Serres, etc. The investigations of Duvernoy on the gorilla, of Gratiolet and M. d'Alix upon the chimpanzee, have established the fact that the anthropomorphous apes possess the same fundamental character in every point. Moreover, a glance at the page where Huxley has figured side by side a human skeleton and the skeletons of the most highly developed apes, is a sufficiently convincing proof of the fact.

The consequence of these facts, from the point of view of the logical application of the law of permanent characterisation, is that man cannot be descended from an ancestor who is already characterised as an ape, any more than a catarrhine tailless ape can be descended from a tailed catarrhine. A walking animal cannot be descended from a climbing one. This was clearly understood by Vogt. In placing man among the

primates he declares, without hesitation, that the lowest class of apes have passed the landmark (the common ancestor) from which the different types of this family have originated and diverged.

We must then place the origin of man beyond the last ape if we wish to adhere to one of the laws most emphatically necessary to the Darwinian theory. We then come to the prosimia of Haeckel, the loris, indris, etc. But these animals also are climbers; we must go further, therefore, in search of our first direct ancestor. But the genealogy traced by Haeckel brings us from the latter to the marsupials.

From man to the kangaroo the distance is certainly great. Now neither living nor extinct fauna show the intermediate types which ought to serve as landmarks. This difficulty causes but slight embarrassment to Darwin. We know that he considers the want of information upon similar questions as a proof in his favour. Haeckel doubtless is just as little embarrassed. He admits the existence of an absolutely theoretical pithecoid man, and it is not the only instance in which he proceeds in a similar manner in order to complete his genealogical table. Take as an instance his words upon the sozoura (14th stage), an amphibious animal which is equally unknown to science. "The proof of its existence arises from the necessity of an intermediate type between the 13th and the 14th stage."

Thus, since it has been proved that, according to Darwinism itself, the origin of man must be placed beyond the 18th stage, and since it becomes, in consequence necessary to fill up the gap between marsupials and man, will Haeckel admit the existence of four unknown intermediate groups, instead of one? Will he complete his genealogy in this manner? It is not for me to answer.

V. Darwin and Haeckel will most certainly think it very strange that a representative of the old school, a man who believes in the reality of species, should have the pretension to be better acquainted with the application of the laws of Darwinism than themselves, and to point out serious lapses

in the applications they have made. Let us take our stand then on the ground of facts. There we shall at once find proof that this genealogy is wrong throughout, and is founded on a material anatomical error.

Both Darwin and Haeckel connect the simian series with a type which would now be represented by the lemurida, which the latter designates by the term prosimia. The only grounds which Darwin assigns for this opinion are certain characters taken especially from dentition. Haeckel goes back to embryogenesis.

We know that with the exception of the marsupials (kangaroos, sarrigue), and the monotremata (ornithorhynchus, echidna), all mammals have a placenta, an organ essentially composed of a network of blood-vessels, which unites the mother to the fœtus, and serves for the nutrition of the latter. With the ruminants, the edentata, and the cetacea, the placenta is simple and diffuse, that is to say, the tufts of the blood-vessels are developed upon the entire surface of the foetal envelope, and are in direct communication with the inner surface of the uterus. In the rest of the mammals the placenta is double; half being derived from the mother, and half from the fœtus, or rather its external envelope. A special membrane called the Decidua covers the interior of the uterus, and unites the placenta. Haeckel, correctly attaching great importance to these anatomical differences, divides mammals into two great groups: the indeciduata, which have no decidua, and the deciduata, which possess it.

Among the latter the placenta can surround the mammalian ovum like a girdle (zonoplacentalia), or form a kind of circular disc more or less developed (discoplacentalia). Man, apes, bats, insectivora, and rodents, present the latter arrangement, and thus form a natural group to which no zonoplacential, and, of course, no indeciduate mammals can be admitted.

Haeckel, without the least hesitation, adds his prosimiœ to the groups which I have just enumerated, that is to say, he attributes to them a decidua and a discoidal placenta