Man, in respect of his mental endowments, stands alone and unapproachable among living creatures. Considered as to his "place in nature," however, he must be described as an erect-walking Mammal, possessing anterior extremities developed into hands of great perfection, for exclusive use as tactile and grasping organs, and posterior limbs, on which his body is perfectly balanced and entirely supported, exclusively devoted to locomotion, as well as highly specialised cerebral characters. These attributes in part constitute the standard by which we estimate superiority in animal structure, and fitness of adaptation. Notwithstanding the numerous varieties and races of {2}mankind distributed over every region of the globe, each exhibiting differences in habits, customs and superficial complexion, Man forms but one species, _Homo sapiens_, the sole representative of the unique genus of his family. Though the genus _Homo_ is thus far apparently zoologically isolated, there is a remarkable group of animals, which we designate "Apes," and which, possessing many of the same structural characters more or less modified, stand apart from all the other Mammalia, and make a distinct approach to Man. Between Man, however, and the Apes, even the untrained eye at once perceives, amid obvious marks of inferiority, unmistakable resemblances, while anatomical investigations reveal that "the points in which Man differs from the Apes most nearly resembling him, are not of greater importance than those in which the Ape differs from other and universally acknowledged members of the group." (_Flower_ and _Lydekker_.) The Apes, on the other hand, are so nearly related to the Monkeys, the Baboons and the Marmosets, by characters which insensibly merge into each other that they, along with Man, must logically be embraced in the same zoological division. The animals known to us as Lemurs, called by the Germans "Half-Apes" and by the French "False-Monkeys," are the nearest to the Apes and Man of all the remaining Mammals, though there are many points of divergence from the above-named groups. The Lemurs, in fact, exhibit considerable affinity to lower forms of Mammalia, especially to the Insectivora, but in internal structure and habit they approach the Anthropiform[1] group just referred to--in the flattened form of the digits, the opposable great toe, with its ankle-bone (the ento-cuneiform) rounded for its articulation, as in the higher Apes and Man. {3}The Lemurs have, by many distinguished naturalists, been relegated to a distinct Order quite separate from the latter; but by such pre-eminent authorities as Linnæus, Lesson, Huxley, Broca and Flower, they have been assigned a subordinate position within that great Order, on which has been conferred the rank of the Primates of the Animal Kingdom.