ad land. The males were provided with great canine teeth, which
served them as formidable weapons."[5] This ancient form "if seen by a
naturalist, would undoubtedly have been ranked as an ape or a monkey.
And as man, under a genealogical point of view, belongs to the CATARHINE
or Old World stock (of monkeys), we must conclude, however much the
conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have
been properly thus designated."[6] So here you have your genealogy, name
and thing fully described. Mr. Darwin thinks it is quite an honorable
pedigree: "Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length,
but not, it may be said, of noble quality. * * * Unless we willfully
close our eyes, we may, with our present knowledge, approximately
recognize our parentage, nor need we feel ashamed of it. The most humble
organism is something much higher than the inorganic dust under our
feet; and no one with an unbiased mind can study any living creature,
however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvelous
structure and properties."[A] There are people, however, who do not grow
enthusiastic at the idea of their long-tailed progenitors; but there is
no accounting for taste in such matters!

For elderly people, who do not take so enthusiastically to monkeys as
his junior readers, Mr. Darwin has provided a rather less gymnastic
ancestry. How would you like to have a fish for your forefather? If it
were one of Neptune's noble tritons, or the Philistine fish-god, Dagon,
or a mermaid, it might not be so repulsive as the ape; or even a
twenty-pound salmon, flashing its silver and blue in the sunlight as it
spins the line off the reel, might not be so utterly disgusting as the
monkey burlesque of humanity. But, alas! Mr. Darwin has been sent to
this proud nineteenth century as the prophet to teach us humility, and
here is the scientific statement of the structure of our fishy
forefathers: "At a still earlier period the progenitors of man must have
been aquatic in their habits, for morphology plainly tells us that our
lungs consist of a modified swim bladder which once served as a float.
These early predecessors of man thus seen in the dim recesses of time
must have been as lowly organized as the lancelot or amphibioxus, or
even still more lowly organized."[7]

That certainly is a very humble origin. We are not, however, by any
means to the end of our pedigree. Mr. Darwin says that your codfish
aristocra