Lamarck endeavoured to show how, by means of his _theory of habit_, it was possible to conceive the direct transmutation of the chimpanzee into man. The Darwinists also agree in connecting man with the apes. Nevertheless none of them point out any of the species at present existing as our immediate ancestor; on this point they differ from their illustrious predecessor. It might be supposed that Vogt had determined this point if we take literally some passages of his _Leçons sur l’homme_. But the Genevese savant has clearly expressed his theory in his _Mémoire sur les Microcéphales_. He carries back the point of departure common to the two types to an _anterior ancestor_. Darwin, Wallace, Filippi, Lubbock, Haeckel, etc., connect man still more closely with the apes. The latter states his conclusions in the following terms:— “The human race is a branch of the catarrhine group; he was developed in the old world, and sprang from apes of this group, which have long been extinct.” II. Vogt disagrees with his scientific colleagues in an important point. He admits that different simian stocks may have given rise to different human groups. The populations of the old and the new world would thus be descendants of the different forms which are peculiar to the two continents. On this hypothesis, Australia and Polynesia, where there never have been apes, must necessarily have been peopled by means of migration. The eminent professor of Geneva, moreover, always confines himself to a somewhat vague statement of his ideas relative to the genealogies which he thinks fit to attribute to the different groups of mankind. III. Darwin and Haeckel have been bolder. The former has published an important work upon the _Descent of Man_, and the latter in his _History of the Creation of Organised Beings_ has treated the same subject in detail, and given the genealogical table of our supposed ancestors, starting from the most simple known animals. The master and the disciple agree almost invariably, and it is to Haeckel himself that Darwin refers the reader who is curious to know the human genealogy in detail. Let us glance rapidly at the origin assigned to us by the German naturalist. Haeckel considers as the first ancestor of all living beings the _monera_, which are nothing more than the _amœbæ_ as understood by Dujardin. From this initial form man has reached the state in which we now find him, by passing through twenty-one typical transitory forms. In the present state of things our nearest neighbours are the anthropomorphous or _tailless catarrhine apes_, such as the orang, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, etc. All are sprung from the same stock, from the type of the _tailed catarrhine apes_, the latter are descended from the _prosimiæ_, a type which is now represented by the macaucos, the loris, etc. Next come the marsupials, which form the 17th stage of our evolution; further examination is useless.