Note 80 — Chapter VI

"In the presence of the various genealogical trees of animal descent which have been put forward so frequently of late, a judicious skepticism seems the attitude best warranted by the evidence yet obtained. If so many similar forms have arisen in mutual independence, then the affinities of the animal kingdom can never be represented by the symbol of a tree. Rather, we should conceive of the existence of a grove of trees, closely approximated, greatly differing in age and size, with their branches interlaced in a most complex entanglement. The great group of apes is composed of two such branches; but their relations one to another, to the other branches which represent mammalian groups, and to the trunks from which such branches diverge, are problems still awaiting solution."—"Encyclopædia Britannica," article "Apes."