[Illustration: FIG. 185.—Lower Jaw of _Dryopithecus Fontani_. An Anthropoid Ape of the Middle Miocene of France. Natural size.] Much interest attaches to the first appearance of the order of Apes (_Quadrumana_), or, if we take the somewhat deceptive classification favoured by some modern zoologists, the _Primates_, including the apes and man. They begin in the Eocene, both in Europe and America, with the lowest tribe, that of the Lemurs, now confined to the island of Madagascar and parts of Africa and Southern Asia, and which may, Gaudry thinks, be modified Marsupials, though he admits that this is hard to understand. He mentions the resemblance of the teeth of monkeys to those of some hog-like animals, a resemblance, however, merely marking a similarity of food, and suggests on this ground that some of the primitive ancestors of the hog may have also given rise to the Monkeys. In the Miocene of Europe and Asia we have true Apes; and one of these, which rivals man in stature (_Dryopithecus_), belongs to the group of the gibbons, or long-armed apes, one of the higher families of the modern _Quadrumana_ (Fig. 185). This animal presents, indeed, the nearest approach to man made by any Tertiary mammal. Still the differences are great, as, for instance, in the much larger size of the canines and premolars. Yet so much confidence has Gaudry in the resemblances, that he even ventures to suggest that certain flint chips found in the Miocene of Thenay, and which have been supposed to indicate human workmanship, may have been chipped by the hands of _Dryopithecus_. Should this view be adopted by evolutionists, it will at least have the effect of preventing flint chips from being received as evidences of the antiquity of man. It is scarcely necessary to sum up this review of the history of the Tertiary mammals. Much that has been said may be modified or changed by future discoveries; but the great facts of the late appearance of the placental mammals, of their rapid introduction, with their ordinal differentiation nearly complete over all the continents, of the speedy culmination and early decadence of many types, and of the unchanged permanence of others, must in the main be sustained. It is not too much to say that to account for these facts the evolutionist must abandon the idea of gradual change, and adopt that of “critical periods” when sudden changes occurred. The history becomes inexplicable, unless with Mivart, Le Conte, and Saporta, we admit “periods of rapid evolution” alternating with others of stagnation or retrogression; and if we admit these, we practically fall back on the old idea of creation; only it may perhaps be “Creation by Law.” [Illustration: CONTEMPORARIES OF POST-GLACIAL MAN. From a painting by Waterhouse Hawkins.] CHAPTER X. THE ADVENT OF MAN.