The earliest races of men were speechless—the ape-like ‘Alali’—beings, living wholly upon the ground and walking upon their hind-limbs, but without more than the mere rudiments of language. The vertical position led to a much greater development of the posterior parts, especially of the muscles of the back and the calves of the leg. The great toe, which in the ape is opposable, lost its opposability, or all except traces of it, after the abandonment of arboreal life. It must have been a sight fit to stir the soul of the most leathern, these children of the night, with low brows, stooping gait, and ape-like faces, armed with rude clubs, clothed in natural hair, and wandering about in droves without law, fire, or understanding, hiding in thickets and in the holes of the earth, feeding on roots and fruits, and contending doubtfully with the species around them for food and existence. From the ‘Alali’—the speechless ape-men—we may imagine the true men to have evolved—talking men, men with erect posture and mature brain and larynx, the woolly-haired ulotrichi and the straight-haired lissotrichi. There are four existing species of woolly-haired men: the Papuans of New Guinea and Melanesia, and the Hottentots, Caffres, and Negroes of southern, equatorial, and north central Africa respectively. They all have long heads, slanting teeth, very dark skin, and black, bushy hair, each individual hair in cross-section being flat or oval in shape. In the straight-haired races the skin is much fairer than in the woolly-haired races, being seldom darker than brown, and each individual hair in cross-section is round like the cross-section of a cylinder. The principal species of straight-haired men are the sea-roving Malays of the East Indies and the Pacific, the round-faced Mongols of eastern and northern Asia, the aboriginal Americans of the western hemisphere, and the incomparable Aryans, including the ancient Greeks and Romans and the modern peoples of India, Persia, and Europe. Man is to-day the pre-eminent animal of the planet. The successive ascendancies of the Worm, the Mollusk, the Crustacean, the Fish, the Reptile, and the Mammal, are followed triumphantly by the ascendancy of the Children of the Ape.