. The descent of the primates; lectures delivered on the occasion of the sesquicentennial celebration of Princeton university . anthropoid apes may be only more distantlyallied to the non-anthropoid old-world monkeys,at all events less closely than is at present gener-ally admitted. In respect to details of denti-tion Anaptomorphus points rather to the An-thropoidea than to the Catarhine monkeys. Sodoes Homunculus patagonicus, one of Ameghinosfossil Cebidae, whose dentition, to quote Osbornswords, is as advanced in reduction as that ofman. Secondly, certain Insectivora seem torealize the arche
. The descent of the primates; lectures delivered on the occasion of the sesquicentennial celebration of Princeton university . anthropoid apes may be only more distantlyallied to the non-anthropoid old-world monkeys,at all events less closely than is at present gener-ally admitted. In respect to details of denti-tion Anaptomorphus points rather to the An-thropoidea than to the Catarhine monkeys. Sodoes Homunculus patagonicus, one of Ameghinosfossil Cebidae, whose dentition, to quote Osbornswords, is as advanced in reduction as that ofman. Secondly, certain Insectivora seem torealize the archetype of the placentation of manand the anthropoids, whereas the placentationof the old-world monkeys, as far as it is known,would more easily compare to what we find inTarsius, there being no decidua reflexa, which isso essential for the formation of that verypeculiar type of discoid placenta that is com-mon to Erinaceus, the Anthropomorpha^ andMan. On these grounds I would not feel justifiedin contradicting a hypothetical view, if one ofyou might be found willing to propound it,according to which a direct ancestor of the. c/) THE DESCENT OF THE PRIMATES 23 anthropoids and man, differing from SimiaeCatarhinie, Platyrhina?, and Tarsidie, must haveexisted tlirougliout tl>e Tertiaries, and must havedirectly sprung from a Mesozoic insectivorousancestor, small, in size, but already more or lesserect in posture, provided with a spacious braincavity, with a decidua reflexa, and with a dis-coid placenta of the Erinacean type of develop-ment. Now, in suggesting the existence of thisunknown intermediate form, you would not beoverdrawing the amount which is booked to thecredit of scientific speculation in the bank ofprobability. As to the smallness in size ofMesozoic Trituberculata, palseontology not onlygives ample evidence, but it distinctly does notencourage any other assumption. With regardto a spacious brain cavity, it should be remem-bered that among the South American monkeyscer
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