ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the characters of the blood of the Primates from the points of view of taxonomy and phylogeny: the morphology of the blood cells, the crystallography of the hemoglobins, the serum precipitin reaction, the blood groups, and the specificity of the red cells. The blood serum and red blood corpuscles of the apes, including the gibbons, respectively contain group iso-agglutinins and group iso-agglutinogens which are specifically the same as those found in human blood. In the light of the evidence of the blood groups and precipitin reactions, it would seem that, except for the presence in each of reciprocal hetero-agglutinins, there is little hematological differentiation between man and the apes. The fact of the anthropoid blood groups is of equal importance phyletically with the fact that man and the apes are among the very few mammals known to be incapable of carrying the oxidation of purine bases as far as allantoin.
