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There are many kinds of them, however; and, although classed in a group called lemurs, they differ exceedingly from one another, some of them having the appearance of foxes, others more resembling squirrels, and still others like flying squirrels being possessed of a similar wing-like appendage, and capable, like them, of extended flight.
And it is a remarkable circumstance that though, so far as our present knowledge extends, there 'is' one true structural break in the series of forms of Simian brains, this hiatus does not lie between Man and the man-like apes, but between the lower and the lowest Simians; or, in other words, between the old and new world apes and monkeys, and the Lemurs.
We may take, after the Lemurs, the earliest and lowest Platyrrhines of South America, with thirty-six teeth, as the twenty-sixth stage of our genealogy; they were developed from the Lemurs by a peculiar modification of the brain, teeth, nose, and fingers. They lived during the Tertiary period, and are found fossilised in the Miocene.
In the remote Eocene period the same temperate lands were inhabited by lemurs in the East, and by curious animals believed to be intermediate between lemurs and marmosets in the West.
Fish, batrachians, reptiles, mammals; in which latter are included the marsupials as well as lemurs, primates, Man. And after what struggles Man assumed an erect position and looked into the eyes of his mate! After Man? Nietzsche preaches that man is a link between the primate and Superman; Superman the angels!
They were not remote, save as one's own soul would be remote by its very excess of intimacy with life, Little maids, so shy that their actuality was certain, came before them carrying flowers, and these were followed by youths scattering fragrant burning powder whose fallen flames were instantly pounced upon and extinguished by small furry lemurs trained to lay silver discs upon the flames.
And it is a remarkable circumstance that though, so far as our present knowledge extends, there 'is' one true structural break in the series of forms of Simian brains, this hiatus does not lie between Man and the man-like apes, but between the lower and the lowest Simians; or, in other words, between the old and new world apes and monkeys, and the Lemurs.
For these reasons a survey of the various members of the order of primates must deal largely with the progressive elaboration of the brain and the entailed effects of this enlargement. The order of primates is subdivided as follows : Sub-order 1. PROSIMII. Lemurs. Sub-order 2. ANTHROPOIDEA. Family 1. Hapalidæ. The marmosets. Family 2. Cebidæ. The American or tailed monkeys. Family 3.
Out of the fish he concludes that the amphibia were developed, and out of those the reptilia, out of one of them the marsupialia, and from them the lemurs or half-apes, the representatives of which yet live in Madagascar and the southern part of Asia.
The most distinguishing characteristic of the apes and of the nearly related lemurs has not hitherto been definitely pointed out. This is that they form the only group of strictly arboreal animals. The tree is not alone their native habitat, but they are specially adapted to it in their organs of motion, a fact which cannot be affirmed of any other animal group.
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