(white-nosed monkey, macaco, baboon)." We must, therefore, consider the descent of man from other Catarrhines to be fully proved. Whatever further information on the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the living Catarrhines we may obtain in the future, it cannot possibly disturb this conclusion. Naturally, our Catarrhine ancestors must have passed through a long series of different forms before the human type was produced. The chief advances that effected this "creation of man," or his differentiation from the nearest related Catarrhines, were: the adoption of the erect posture and the consequent greater differentiation of the fore and hind limbs, the evolution of articulate speech and its organ, the larynx, and the further development of the brain and its function, the soul; sexual selection had a great influence in this, as Darwin showed in his famous work. With an eye to these advances we can distinguish at least four important stages in our simian ancestry, which represent prominent points in the historical process of the making of man. 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. From these Eocene stem-apes were formed the earliest Catarrhines or eastern apes, with the human dentition (thirty-two teeth), by modification of the nose, lengthening of the bony channel of the ear, and the loss of four pre-molars. These oldest stem-forms of the whole Catarrhine group were still thickly coated with hair, and had long tails--baboons (Cynopitheca) or tailed apes (Menocerca, Figure 2.276). They lived during the Tertiary period, and are found fossilised in the Miocene. Of the actual tailed apes perhaps the nearest to them are the Semnopitheci. If we take these Semnopitheci as the twenty-seventh stage in our ancestry, we may put next to them, as the twenty-eighth, the tail-less anthropoid apes. This name is given to the most advanced and man-like of the existing Catarrhines. They were developed from the other Catarrhines by losing the tail and part of the hair, and by a higher development of the brain, which found expression in the enormous growth of the skull. Of this remarkable family there are only a few genera to-day, and we have already dealt with them (Chapter 1.15)--the gibbon (Hylobates, Figure 1.203) and orang (Satyrus, Figures 1.204 and 1.205) in South-Eastern Asia and the Archipelago; and the chimpanzee (Anthropithecus, Figures 1.206 and 1.207) and gorilla (Gorilla, Figure 1.208) in Equatorial Africa.