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a
en ee ee TR ern aeons ae eee
eh ae, ig 44 ae Cte tate
EVIDENCE
AS TO
MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE.
‘suoabung fo abayjog ywohoay ayn fo wnasnyy oy, Ue suamrods wouf suryunpy asnoysanmy “aye Aq Uap ‘(aungou Sp aban] 8D 29102 sn YoryUs Uoggry ayz fo 104] ededx—a) azrs younqou ayy fo suniborgT Wout poonpas hyynavydouboj0y
“‘VITINON) ‘LAZNVAWIHD) ‘NOMALd) ayn fo suojnayy
EVIDENCE
AS TO
MANS PLACE IN NATURE.
BY
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY,
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ;
AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 1868.
Lid @00¥Y WALYSA1
es a Sire Sell <i Qa : OlPe ml is olf a
<
< ite
\ NY A AN 3
CIS
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER.
Tue greater part of the substance of the following Essays has already been published in the form of Oral Discourses, addressed to widely different audiences, during the past three years.
Upon the subject of the second Essay, I delivered six Lectures to the Working Men in 1860, and two, to the members of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh in 1862. The readiness with which my audience followed my arguments, on these occasions, encourages me to hope that I have not committed the error, into which working men of science so readily fall, of obscuring my meaning by unnecessary technicalities: while, the length of the period during which the subject, under its various aspects, has been present to my mind, may suffice to satisfy the Reader that, my conclusions, be they right or be they wrong, have not
been formed hastily or enunciated crudely.
Lonpon : January, 1863.
iat cit
LON THE NATURAL HISTORY
OF THE
MAN-LIKE APES.
AnciEntT traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern investigation, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one, presaging a reality. Ovid foreshadowed the discoveries of the geologist: the Atlantis was an imagination, but Columbus found a western world: and though the quaint forms of Centaurs and Satyrs have an existence only in the realms of art, creatures approaching man more nearly than they in essential structure, and yet as thoroughly brutal as the goat’s or horse’s half of the mythical compound, are now not only known, but notorious.
I have not met with any notice of one of these Man- LIKE Apes of earlier date than that con- tained in Pigafetta’s “ Description of the kingdom of Congo,” drawn up from the notes of a Portuguese ‘sailor, Eduardo Lo- pez, and published in 1598. The tenth chapter of this work is entitled “De Animalibus que in hac provincia reperiun-
Fic. 1.—Simiz magnatum deliciz.—De Bry, 1598.
* Rucnum Congo: hoc est Vera Duscrrptio ReGNI AFRICANI QUOD TAM AB INCOLIS QUAM LUSITANIS CONGUS APPELLATUR, per Philippum Piga-
B
2
tur,” and contains a brief passage to the effect that “in the Songan country, on the banks of the Zaire, there are multi- tudes of apes, which afford great delight to the nobles by imitating human gestures.’ As this might apply to almost any kind of apes, I should have thought little of it, had not the brothers De Bry, whose engravings illustrate the work, thought fit, in their eleventh “Argumentum,” to figure two of these ‘‘ Simiz magnatum delicie.” So much of the plate as contains these apes is faithfully copied m the woodcut (fig. 1), and it will be observed that they are tail-less, long- armed, and large-eared ; and about the size of Chimpanzees. It may be that these apes are as much figments of the imagi- nation of the ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged, crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same plate; or, on the other hand, it may be that the artists have constructed their drawings from some essentially faithful description of a Gorilla or a Chimpanzee. And, in either case, though these figures are worth a passing notice, the oldest trustworthy and definite accounts of any animal of this kind date from the 17th century, and are due to an Englishman.
The first edition of that most amusing old book, “ Purchas his Pilgrimage,” was published in 1613, and therein are to be found many references to the statements of one whom Purchas terms “ Andrew Battell (my neere neighbour, dwell- ing at Leigh in Essex) who served under Manuel Silvera Perera, Governor under the King of Spaine, at his city of Saint Paul, and with him went farre into the countrey of Angola ;’’ and again, “my friend, Andrew Battle, who lived in the kingdom of.Congo many yeares,” and who, “upon some quarell betwixt the Portugals (among whom he was a sergeant of a band) and him, lived eight or nine moneths in the woodes.” From this weather-beaten old soldier, Purchas
fettam, olim ex Edoardo Lopez acroamatis lingua Italica excerpta, num Latio sermone donata ab August. Cassiod. Reinio. Iconibus et imaginibus rerum
memorabilium quasi vivis, opera et industria Joan. Theodori et Joan. Israelis de Bry, fratrum exornata. Francofurti, Mpxcvim.
3
was amazed to hear “of a kinde of Great Apes, if they might so bee termed, of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature of their limmes, with strength proportion- able, hairie ‘all over, otherwise altogether like men and women in their whole bodilyshape.* They lived on such wilde fruits as the trees and woods yielded, and in the night time lodged on the trees.”’
This extract is, however, less detailed and clear in its state- ments than a passage in the third chapter of the second part of another work—“Purchas his Pilgrimes,’’ published in 1625, by the same author— which has been often, though hardly ever quite rightly, cited. The chapter is entitled, “The strange adventures of Andrew Battell, of Leigh in Essex, sent by the Portugals prisoner to Angola, who lived there and in the adioin- ing regions neere eighteene yeeres.” And the sixth section of this chapter is headed—‘“ Of the Provinces of Bongo, Ca- longo, Mayombe, Manikesocke, Motimbas: of the Ape Mon~ ster Pongo, their hunting: Idolatries; and divers other
observations.” :
2 Ts province (Calongo) wad the east bordereth upon Bongo, and toward the north upon Mayombe, which is nineteen leagues from Longo along the coast.
“This province of Mayombe is all woods and groves, so overgrowne that a man may travaile twentie days in the shadow without any sunne or heat. Here is no kind of corne nor graine, so that the people liveth onely upon plantanes and roots of sundrie sorts, very good; and nuts; nor any kinde of tame cattell, nor hens.
“ But they have great store of elephant’s flesh, which they greatly esteeme, and many kinds of wild beasts; and great store of fish, Here is a great sandy bay, two leagues to the northward of Cape Negro,+ which is the port of Mayombe. Sometimes the Portugals lade logwood in this bay. Here is
* “Except this that their legges had no calves.”—[Ed, 1626.] And in a marginal note, “ These great apes are called Pongo’s.” } Purchas’ note.—Cape Negro is in 16 degrees south of the line.
B 2
en ee ee marae Het mone
4.
a great river, called Banna: in the winter it hath no barre, because the generall winds cause a great sea. But when the sunne hath his south declination, then a boat may goe in; for then it is smooth because of the raine. This river is very great, and hath many ilands and people dwelling in them. The woods are so covered with baboones, monkies, apes and parrots, that it will feare any man to travaile in them alone, Here are also two kinds of monsters, which are common in these woods, and very dangerous.
“The greatest of these two monsters is called Pongo in their language, and the lesser is called Engeco. This Pongo is in all proportion like a man; but that he is more like a giant in stature than a man; for he is very tall, and hath a man’s face, hollow-eyed, with long haire upon his browes. His face and eares are without haire, and his hands also. His bodie is full of haire, but not very thicke ; and it is of a dunnish colour.
“He differeth not from a man but in his legs; for they have no calfe. Hee goeth alwaies upon his legs, and carrieth his hands clasped in the nape of his necke when he goeth upon the ground. They sleepe in the trees, and build shelters for the raine. They feed upon fruit that they find in the woods, and upon nuts, for they eate no kind of flesh. They cannot speake, and have no understanding more than a beast. The people of the countrie, when they travaile in the woods make fires where they sleepe in the night; and in the morning when they are gone, the Pongoes will come and sit about the fire till it goeth out; for they have no understand- ing to lay the wood together. They goe many together and kill many negroes that travaile in the woods. Many times they fall upon the elephants which come to feed where they be, and so beate them with their clubbed fists, and pieces of wood, that they will runne roaring away from them. Those Pongoes are never taken alive because they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them; but yet they take many of their young ones with poisoned arrowes. -
5
‘The young Pongo hangeth on his mother’s belly with his hands fast clasped about her, so that when the countrie people kill any of the females they take the young one, which hangeth fast upon his mother. ©
“When they die among themselves, they cover ‘the dead
with great heaps of boughs and wood, which is commonly found in the forest.” *
It does not appear difficult to identify the exact region of which Battell speaks. Longo is doubtless the name of the place usually spelled Loango on our maps. Mayombe still
lies some nineteen leagues northward from Loango, along the — coast; and Cilongo or Kilonga, Manikesocke, and Motimbas |
are yet registered by geographers. The Cape Negro of Bat- tell, however, cannot be the modern Cape Negro in 16° S., since Loango itself is in 4° S. latitude. On the other hand, the “great river called Banna” corresponds very well with the “Camma” and “ Fernand Vas,” of modern geographers, which form'a great delta on this part of the African coast. Now this “Camma™” country is situated about a degree and a-half south of the Equator, while a few miles to the north
of the line lies the Gaboon, and a degree or so north of |
that, the Money River—both well known to modern natu- ralists as localities where the largest of man-like Apes has peen obtained. Moreover, at the present day, the word Engeco, or N’schego, is applied by the natives of these regions to the smaller of the two great Apes which inhabit them; so that there can be no rational doubt that Andrew Battell spoke of that which he knew of his own knowledge, or, at any rate, by immediate report from the natives of
* Purchas’ marginal note, p. 982 :—“ The Pongo a giant ape. He told me in conference with him, that one of these Pongoes tooke a negro boy of his which lived a moneth with them. For they hurt not those which they surprise at unawares, except they look on them; which he avoyded. He said their highth was like a man’s, but their bignesse twice as great. I saw the negro boy. What the other monster should be he hath forgotten to relate; and these papers came to my hand since his death, which, otherwise, in my often conferences, I might have learned. Perhaps he meaneth the Pigmy Pongo killers mentioned.”
6
Western Africa. The “Engeco,” however, is that “ other monster”? whose nature Battell “forgot to relate,” while the name ‘“* Pongo”’—applied to the animal whose characters and habits are so fully and carefully described—seems to have died out, at least in its primitive form and _ signification. Indeed, there is evidence that not only in Battell’s time, but up to a very recent date, it was used in a totally different sense from that in which he employs it. _ For example, the second chapter of Purchas’ work, which a have just quoted, contains “ A Description and Historicall Declaration of the Golden Kingdom of Guinea, &c. &c. Translated from the Dutch, and compared also with the Latin,” wherein it is stated (p. 986) that— _ “The River Gaboon lyeth about fifteen miles northward from Rio de Angra, and eight miles northward from Cape de Lope Gonsalvez (Cape Lopez), and is right under the Equinoctial line, about fifteene miles from St. Thomas, and is a great land, well and easily to be knowne. At the mouth of the river there lieth a sand, three or foure fathoms deepe, whereon it beateth mightily with the streame which runneth out of the river into the sea. This river, in the mouth thereof, is at least four miles broad ; but when you are about the Iland called Pongo, it is not above two miles broad. On both sides the river there standeth many trees. ex The Iland called Pongo, which hath a monstrous high hill,” The French naval officers, whose letters are appended to the late M. Isidore Geoff. Saint Hilaire’s excellent essay on the Gorilla,* note in similar terms the width of the Gaboon, the trees that line its banks down to the water’s edge, and the strong current that sets out of it. They describe two islands in its estuary ;—one low, called Perroquet; the other high, presenting three conical hills, called Coniquet; and one of them, M. Franquet, expressly states that, formerly, the Chief of Coniquet was called Meni-Pongo, meaning thereby Lord
* Archives du Museum, Tome X.
of Pongo; and that the N’Pongues (as, in agreement with Dr. Savage, he affirms the natives call themselves) term the estuary of the Gaboon itself N’Pongo.
It is so easy, in dealing with savages, to misunderstand
their applications of words to things, that one is at first in-
clined to suspect Battell of having confounded the name of this region, where his “ greater monster” still abounds, with
the name of the animal itself. But he is so right about
other matters (including the name of the “lesser monster ’ Z5
that one is loth to suspect the old traveller of error; and, on *
the other hand, we shall find that a voyager of a hundred years’ later date speaks of the name “ Boggoe,” as applied to
a great Ape, by the inhabitants of quite another part
of Africa—Sierra Leone.
But I must leave this question to be settled by philologers and travellers; and I should hardly have dwelt'so long upon it except for the curious part played by this word ‘ Pongo’ in the later history of the man-like Apes. re
The generation which succeeded Battell saw the first of the Homo Sylveftris. man-like Apes which was res a ever brought to Europe, or,
at any rate, whose visit found a historian. In the third book of Tulpius’ “ Observa- tiones Medice,” published in 1641, the 56th chapter or section is devoted to what he calls Satyrus indicus, ‘called by the Indians Orang-autang, or Man-of- the Woods, and by the Afri- cans Quoias Morrou.’ He as gives a very good figure, Unies = evidently from the life, of Fig, 2—The Orang of Tulpius, 1641. the specimen of this animal,
“ nostra memoria ex AngolA delatum,” presented to Frederick
8
Heury Prince of Orange. Tulpius says it was as big as a child of three years old, and as stout as one of six years: and ‘that its back was covered with black hair. It is plainly a young Chimpanzee.
In the meanwhile, the existence of other, Asiatic, man-like Apes became known, but at first in a very mythical fashion. Thus Bontius (1658) gives an altogether fabulous and ridi- culous account and figure of an animal which he calls “Orang-outang”; and though he says, “vidi Ego cujus effigiem hic exhibeo,” the said effigies (see fig. 6 for Hoppius’ copy of it) is nothing but a very hairy woman of rather comely aspect, and with proportions and feet wholly human, The judicious English anatomist, Tyson, was justified in say- ing of this description by Bontius, “I confess I do mistrust the whole representation.”
Tt is to the last mentioned writer, and his coadjutor Cowper, that we owe the first account of a man-like ape which has any pretensions to scientific accuracy and com- pleteness. The treatise entitled, “ Orang-outang, sive Homo Sylvestris ; or the Anatomy of a Pygmie compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man,” published by the Royal Society in 1699, is, indeed, a work of remarkable merit, and has, in some respects, served as a model to subsequent in- quirers, This “ Pygmie,”’ Tyson tells us, “was brought from Angola, in Africa; but was first taken a great deal higher up the country;” its hair “was of a coal-black colour, and strait,” and “when it went asa quadruped on all four, ’twas awkwardly ; not placing the palm of the hand flat to the ground, but it walk’d upon its knuckles, as I observed it to do when weak and had not strength enough to support its body.”—“ From the top of the head to the heel of the foot, in a strait line, it measured twenty-six inches.”
These characters, even without Tyson’s good figures (figs. 3 and 4), would have been sufficient to prove his “ Pyg- mie” to be a young Chimpanzee. But the opportunity of examining the skeleton of the very animal Tyson anatomised
9
having most unexpectedly presented itself to me, 1 am able to bear independent testimony to its being a veritable Trog-
ip
Fries. 3 & 4.—The ‘ Pygmie’ reduced from Tyson’s figures 1 and 2, 1699.
lodytes niger,* though still very young. Although fully appreciating the resemblances between his Pygmie and Man, Tyson by no means overlooked the differences between the two, and he”concludes his memoir by summing up first, the points in which “the Ourang-outang or Pygmie more re- sembled a Man than Apes and Monkeys do,” under forty-seven distinct heads; and then giving, in thirty-four similar brief paragraphs, the respects in which “the Ourang-outang or
* T am indebted to Dr. Wright, of Cheltenham, whose paleontological labours are so well known, for bringing this interesting relic to my knowledge. Tyson’s granddaughter, it appears, married Dr. Allardyce, a physician of repute in Cheltenham, and brought, as part of her dowry, the skeleton of the ‘ Pygmie.’ Dr. Allardyce presented it to the Cheltenham Museum, and, through the good offices of my friend Dr. Wright, the ‘authorities of the Museum have permitted me to borrow, what is, perhaps, its most remarkable ornament.
10
Pygmie differ’d from a Man and resembled more the Ape and Monkey kind.’
After a careful survey of the literature of the subject extant in his time, our author arrives at the conclusion that his “ Pygmie”’ is identical neither with the Orangs of Tulpius and Bontius, nor with the Quoias Morrou of Dapper (or rather of Tulpius), the Barris of d’Arcos, nor with the Pongo of Battell ; but that it is a species of ape probably identical with the Pygmies of the Ancients, and, says Tyson, though it “does so much resemble a Man in many of its parts, more than any of the ape kind, or any other animal in the world, that I know of: yet by no means do I look upon it as the product of a mixt generation— tis a Brute-Animal sui generis, and a particular species of Ape.”
The name of “Chimpanzee,” by which one of the African Apes is now so well known, appears to have come into use in the first half of the eighteenth century, but the only im- portant addition made, in that period, to our acquaintance with the man-like apes of Africa is contained in “A New
Voyage to Guinea,” by William Smith, which bears the
date 1744, In describing the animals of Sierra Leone, p. 51, this
writer says :—
“T shall next describe a strange sort of animal, called by the white men in this country Mandrill,* but why it is so called I know not, nor did I ever hear the name before, neither can those who call them so tell, except it be for their near resemblance of a human creature, though nothing at all
* “Mandrill” seems to signify a “man-like ape,” the word “ Drill” or “ Dril” having been anciently employed in England to denote an Ape or Baboon. Thus in the fifth edition of Blount’s “ Glossographia, or a Dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined F English tongue . very useful for all such as desire to understand what they read,” published ; in 1681, I find, “ Dril—a stone-cutter’s tool wherewith he bores little holes in marble, &e. Also a large overgrown Ape and Baboon, so called.” “ Drill” is used in the same sense in Charleton’s “ Onomasticon Zoicon,” 1668. The sin- gular etymology of the word given by Buffon seems hardly a probable one.
Il
like an Ape. Their bodies, when full grown, are as big in circumference as a middle-sized man’s—their legs much shorter, and their feet larger; their arms and hands in pro- portion. The head is monstrously big, and the face broad. and flat, without any other hair but the eyebrows; the nose very small, the mouth wide, and the lips thin. The face, which is covered by a white skin, is monstrously ugly, being
Fie. 5.—Facsimile of William Smith’s figure of the ‘ Mandrill,” 1744,
all over wrinkled as with old age; the teeth broad and yel- low; the hands have no more hair than the face, but the same white skin, though all the rest of the body is covered with long black hair, like a bear. They never go upon all- fours, like apes; but cry, when vexed or teased, just like chil- Wis + ae ea es
“When I was at Sherbro, one Mr. Cummerbus, whom I shall have occasion hereafter to mention, made me a present of one of these strange animals, which are called by the natives Boggoe: it was a she-cub, of six months’ age, but even then larger than a Baboon. I gave it in charge to one of the slaves, who knew how to feed and nurse it, being a very tender sort of animal; but whenever I went off the deck
12
the sailors began to teaze it—some loved to sce its tears and hear it cry; others hated its snotty-nose; one who hurt it, being checked by the negro that took care of it, told the slave he was very fond of his country-woman, and asked him if he should not like her for a wife? To which the slave very readily replied, ‘No, this no my wife; this a white woman— this fit wife for you” This unlucky wit of the negro’s, I fancy, hastened its death, for next morning it was found dead under the windlass.”
William Smith’s ‘Mandrill, or ‘ Boggoe,’ as his descrip- tion and figure testify, was, without doubt, a Chimpanzee.
Linnzus knew nothing, of his own observation, of the man- like Apes of either Africa or Asia, but a dissertation by his pupil Hoppius in the “ Ameenitates Academicz ” (VI. §An- thropomorpha’) may be regarded as embodying his views respecting these animals,
The dissertation is illustrated by a plate, of which the ac- companying woodcut, fig. 6,is a reduced copy. The figures are
entitled (from left to right) 1. Troglodyta Bontii; 2. Lucifer Aldrovandi ; 3. Satyrus Tulpii; 4. Pygmeus Edwardi. The first is a bad copy of Bontius’ fictitious < Ourang-outang,’ in whose existence, however, Linnzus appears to have fully believed; for in the standard edition of the « Systema
Fic. 6.—The Anthropomorpha of Linneus,
13
Nature,” it is enumerated as a second species of Homo; “ H. nocturnus.” Lucifer Aldrovandi is a copy of a figure in - Aldrovandus, ‘De Quadrupedibus digitatis viviparis,’ Lib. 2, " p. 249. (1645) entitled “ Cercopithecus forme rare Barbilius vocatus et originem a china ducebat.” Hoppius is of opinion that this may be one of that cat-tailed people, of whom Nicolaus - Ko6ping affirms that they eat a boat’s crew, “ gubernator
navis” and all! In the “ Systema Nature”? Linnzeus calls it |
in a note, Homo caudatus, and seems inclined to regard it as ) | a third species of man. According to Temminck, Satyrus It Tulpii is a copy of the figure of a Chimpanzee published by Scotin in 1738, which I have not seen. It is the Satyrus indicus of the “ Systema Nature,” and is regarded by Lin- nus as possibly a distinct species from Satyrus sylvestris. i
The last, named Pygmeus Edwardi, is copied from the figure of a young “ Man of the Woods,” or true Orang-Utan, given in Edwards’ ‘ Gleanings of Natural History,’ (1758).
Buffon was more fortunate than his great rival. Not only had he the rare opportunity of examining a young Chim- panzee in the living state, but he became possessed of an adult Asiatic man-like Ape—the first and the last adult speci- men of any of these animals brought to Europe for many years. With the valuable assistance of Daubenton, Buffon gave an excellent description of this creature, which, from its singular proportions, he termed the long-armed Ape, or Gibbon. It is the modern Hylobates lar.
Thus when, in 1766, Buffon wrote the fourteenth volume
of his great work, he was personally familiar with the young of one kind of African man-like Ape, and with the adult of an Asiatic species—while the Orang-Utan and the Man- drill of Smith were known to him by report. Furthermore, the Abbé Prevost had translated.a good deal of Purchas’ Pilgrims into French, in his ‘ Histoire générale des Voyages’ (1748), and there Buffon found a version of Andrew Battell’s account of the Pongo and the Engeco. All these data Buffon attempts to weld together into harmony in his chapter en-
S,
14
titled “‘ Les Orang-outangs ou le Pongo et le Jocko.” To this title the following note is appended :— :
“Orang-outang nom de cet animal aux Indes orientales : Pongo nom de cet animal a Lowando Province de Congo.
“ Jocko, Enjocko, nom de cet animal 4 Congo que nous avons adopté. Hn est Particle que nous avons retranché,” -
Thus it was that Andrew Battell’s “ Engeco” became meta- morphosed into “Jocko,” and, in thelatter shape, was spread all over the world, in consequence of the extensive popularity of Buffon’s works. The Abbé Prevost and Buffon between them however, did a good deal more disfigurement to Battell’s sober account than ‘cutting off an article” Thus Battell’s state- ment that the Pongos “ cannot speake, and have no under- standing more than a beast,” is rendered by Buffon “ quil ne peut parler guoiqu’il ait plus d’entendement que les autres ani- maux;” and again, Purchas’ affirmation, “He told me in conference with him, that one of these Pongos tooke a negro boy of his which lived a moneth with them,” stands in the French version, “un pongo lui enleva un petit negre qui passa un an entier dans la societé de ces animaux.”
_. After quoting the account of the great Pongo, Buffon justly
remarks, that all the ‘ Jockos’ and ‘ Orangs’ hitherto brought _ to Europe were young; and he suggests that, in their adult condition, they might be as big as the Pongo or ‘great Orang;’ so that, provisionally, he regarded the Jockos, Orangs, and Pongos as all of one species. And perhaps this was as much as the state of knowledge at the time warranted. But how it came about that Buffon failed to perceive the similarity of Smith’s ‘Mandrill’ to his own ‘Jocko,’ and confounded the former with so totally different a creature as the blue-faced Baboon, is not so easily intelligible. —-
_ Twenty years later Buffon changed his opinion,* and ex- pressed his belief that the Orangs constituted a genus with two species,—a large one, the Pongo of Battell, and a small one, the Jocko: that the small one (Jocko) is the East Indian Orang ;
* Histoire Naturelle, Suppl. tome 7éme, 1789.
15
and that the young animals from Africa, observed by himself
and Tulpius, are simply young Pongos. In the meanwhile, the Dutch naturalist, Vosmaer, gave, in 1778, a very good account and figure of a young Orang, brought alive to Holland, and his countryman, the famous anatomist, Peter Camper, published (1779) an essay on the ~ Orang-Utan of similar value to that of Tyson on the Chim- panzee. He dissected several females and a male, all of which, from the state of their skeleton and their dentition, he justly supposes to have been young. However, judging by the analogy of man, he concludes that they could not have exceeded four feet in height in the adult condition. Further- more, he is very clear as to the specific distinctness of the true East Indian Orang.
‘“‘The Orang,” says he, ‘differs not only from the Pigmy of Tyson and from the Orang of Tulpius by its peculiar colour and its long toes, but also by its whole external form. Its arms, its hands, and its feet are longer, while the thumbs, on the contrary, are much shorter, and the great toes much smaller in proportion.”* And again, “The true Orang, that is to say, that of Asia, that of Borneo, is consequently not the Pithecus, or tail-less Ape, which the Greeks, and especially Galen, have described. It is neither the Pongo nor the Jocko, nor the Orang of Tulpius, nor the Pigmy of Tyson,—it is an animal of a peculiar species, as I shall prove in the clearest manner by the organs of voice and the skeleton in the following chapters,” (1. c. p. 64).
A few years later, M. Radermacher, who held a high office in the Government of the Dutch dominions in India, and was an active member of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, published, in the second part of the Transactions of that Society,+ a Description of the Island of Borneo, which was written between the years 1779 and 1781, and, among
* Camper, Ciuvres, I., p. 56. { Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap. Tweede Deel. Derde Druk. 1826.
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16
much other interesting matter, contains some notes upon the Orang. The small sort of Orang-Utan, viz. that of Vosmaer and of Edwards, he says, is found only in Borneo, and chiefly about Banjermassing, Mampauwa, and Landak. Of these he had seen some fifty during his residence in the Indies ; but none exceeded 23 feet in length. The larger sort, often re- garded as chimera, continues Radermacher, would, perhaps long have remained so, had it not been for the exertions of the Resident at Rembang, M. Palm, who, on returning from Landak towards Pontiana, shot one, and forwarded it to Batavia in spirit, for transmission to Kurope.
Palm’s letter describing the capture runs thus:—* Here- with I send your Excellency, contrary toall expectation (since Jong ago I offered more than a hundred ducats to the natives for an Orang-Utan of four or five feet high) an Orang which I heard of this morning about eight o’clock. For a long time we did our best to take the frightful beast alive in the dense forest about half way to Landak. We forgot even to eat, so anxious were we not to let him escape; but it was necessary to take care he did not revenge himself, as he kept continually breaking off heavy pieces of wood and green branches, and dashing them at us. This game lasted till four o’clock in the afternoon, when we determined to shoot him ; in which I succeeded very well, and indeed better than I ever shot from a boat before; for the bullet went just into the side of his chest, so that he was not much damaged. We got him into the prow still living, and bound him fast, and next morning he died of his wounds. All Pontiana came on board to see him when we arrived.” Palm gives his height from the head to the heel as 49 inches.
A very intelligent German officer, Baron Von Wurmb, who at this time held a post in the Dutch Hast India service, and was Secretary of the Batavian Society, studied this animal, and his careful description of it, entitled “ Beschrijving van der Groote Borneosche Orang-outang of de Oost-Indische Pongo,” is contained in the same volume of the Batavian
17
Society’s Transactions. After Von Wurmb had drawn up his description he states, in a letter dated Batavia, Feb. 18, 1781,* that the specimen was sent to Europe in brandy to be placed in the collection of the Prince of Orange; “unfortunately,” he continues, “we hear that the ship has been wrecked.” Von Wurmb died in the course of the year 1781, the letter ~ in which this passage occurs being the last he wrote; but in his posthumous papers, published in the fourth part of the Transactions of the Batavian Society, there isa brief descrip- tion, with measurements, of a female Pongo four feet high. Did either of these original specimens, on which Von Wurmb’s descriptions are based, ever reach Europe? It is commonly supposed that they did; but I doubt the fact. For, appended to the memoir “ De l’Ourang-outang,” in the collected edition of Camper’s works, Tome I., pp. 64-66, is a note by Camper himself, referring to Von Wurmb’s papers, and continuing thus :—‘ Heretofore, this kind of ape had never ‘been known in Europe. Radermacher has had the kindness
WESLEY Sea
Fig. 7.—The Pongo Skull, sent by Radermacher to Camper, after Camper’s original sketches, as reproduced by Luce.
to send me the skull of one of these animals, which measured fifty-three inches, or four feet five inches, in height. I have
* “Briefe des Herrn vy. Wurmb und des H. Baron von Wollaogen. Gotha, 1794.”
*
Cc
————
| 1 ' f 1
i en
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18
sent some sketches of it to M. Soemmering at Mayence, which are better calculated, however, to give an idea of the form than of the real size of the parts.”
These sketches have been reproduced by Fischer and by Luce, and bear date 1783, Soemmering having received them in 1784. Had either of Von Wurmb’s specimens reached Holland, they would hardly have been unknown at this time to Camper, who, however, goes on to say :—‘ It appears that since this, some more of these monsters have been cap- tured, for an entire skeleton, very badly set up, which had been sent to the Museum of the Prince of Orange, and which I saw only on the 27th of June, 1784, was more than four feet high. I examined this skeleton again on the 19th December, 1785, after it had been excellently put to rights by the ingenious Onymus.”
It appears evident, then, that this skeleton, which is doubt- less that which has always gone by the name of Wurmb’s Pongo, is not that of the animal described by him, though unquestionably similar in all essential points.
Camper proceeds to note some of the most important features of this skeleton; promises to describe it in detail by-and- bye; and is evidently in doubt as to the relation of this great ‘Pongo’ to his “ petit Orang.”
The promised further investigations were never carried out; and so it happened that the Pongo of Von Wurmb took its place by the side of the Chimpanzee, Gibbon, and Orang as a fourth and colossal species of man-like Ape. And indeed nothing could look much less like the Chimpanzees or the Orangs, then known, than the Pongo; for all the specimens of Chimpanzee and Orang which had been observed were small of stature, singularly human in aspect, gentle and docile ; while Wurmb’s Pongo was a monster almost twice their size, of vast strength and fierceness, and very brutal in expression ; its great projecting muzzle, armed with strong teeth, being further disfigured by the outgrowth of: the cheeks into fleshy lobes.
m .
ou
Eventually, in accordance with the usual marauding habits of the Revolutionary armies, the ‘ Pongo’ skeleton was carried. away from Holland into France, and notices of it, expressly
‘intended to demonstrate its entire distinctness from the Orang and its affinity with the baboons, were given, in 1798,
by Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier. Even in Cuvier’s “Tableau Elementaire,’ and in the first
edition of his great work, the “Regne Animal,” the ‘ Pongo’ —
is classed as a species of Baboon. However, so early as 1818, it appears that Cuvier saw reason to alter this opinion, and to adopt the view suggested several years before by Blumenbach,* and after him by Tilesius, that the Bornean Pongo is simply an adult Orang. In 1824, Rudolphi de- monstrated, by the condition of the dentition, more fully and
completely than had been done by his predecessors, that the
Orangs described up to that time were all young animals, and that the skull and teeth of the adult would probably be such as those seen in the Pongo of Wurmb. In the second edition of. the ‘Regne Animal’ (1829), Cuvier infers, from the ‘proportions of all the parts’ and ‘the arrangements of the foramina and sutures of the head,’ that the Pongo is the adult of the Orang-Utan, ‘at least of a very closely allied species,’ and this conclusion was eventually placed beyond all doubt by Professor Owen’s Memoir published in the ‘ Zoological Transactions’ for 1835, and by Temminck in his ‘ Mono- graphies de Mammalogic.2 Temminck’s memoir is remark- able for the completeness of the evidence which it affords as to the modification which the form of the Orang undergoes according to age and sex. Tiedemann first published an account of the brain of the young Orang, while Sandifort, Miiller and Schlegel, described the muscles and the viscera of the adult, and gave the earliest detailed and trustworthy history of the habits of the great Indian Ape in a state of
* See Blumenbach, “Abbildungen Naturhistorichen Gegenstinde,” No. 12,
1810; and Tilesius, “ Naturhistoriche Friichte der ersten Kaiserlich-Russischen
Erdumsegelung,” p. 115, 1813. oe
ee
20
nature; and as important additions have been made by later observers, we are at this moment better acquainted with the adult of the Orang-Utan, than with that of any of the other greater man-like Apes.
It is certainly the Pongo of Wurmb ;* and it is as certainly not the Pongo of Battell, seeing that the Orang-Utan is entirely confined to the great Asiatic islands of Borneo and Sumatra.
And while the progress of discovery thus cleared up the history of the Orang, it also became established that the only other man-like Apes in the eastern world were the various species of Gibbon—Apes of smaller stature, and therefore attracting less attention than the Orangs, though they are spread over a much wider range of country, and are hence more accessible to observation.
Although the geographical area inhabited by the ‘ Pongo’ and ‘Engeco’ of Battell is so much nearer to Europe than that in which the Orang and Gibbon are found, our acquaintance with the African Apes has been of slower growth; indeed, it is only within the last few years that the truthful story of the old English adventurer has been rendered fully intelli- gible. It was not until 1835 that the skeleton of the adult Chimpanzee became known, by the publication of Professor Owen’s above-mentioned very excellent memoir “On the osteology of the Chimpanzee and Orang,” in the Zoological Transactions—a memoir which, by the accuracy of its de- scriptions, the carefulness of its comparisons, and the excel- lence of its figures, made an epoch in the history of our knowledge of the bony framework, not only of the Chim- panzee, but of all the anthropoid Apes.
By the investigations herein detailed, it became evident that the old Chimpanzee acquired a size and aspect as different from those of the young known to Tyson, to Buffon, and to
* Speaking broadly and without prejudice to the question, whether there be more than one species of Orang.
21
_ Traill, as those of the old Orang from the young Orang ; and the subsequent very important researches of Messrs. Savage ¥ and Wyman, the American missionary and anatomist, have bi
‘not only confirmed this conclusion, but have added many | new details.* One of the most interesting among the many valuable ' discoveries made by Dr. Thomas Savage is the fact, that the natives in the Gaboon country at the present day, apply to the Chimpanzee a name—“ Enché-eko ”—which is obviously identical with the “Engeko” of Battell; a discovery which has been confirmed by all later inquirers. Battell’s “lesser monster” being thus proved to be a veritable Fr existence, of course a strong presumption arose that his “ oreater monster,” the ‘Pongo,’ would sooner or later be discovered. And, indeed, a modern traveller, Bowdich, had, in 1819, found strong evidence, among the natives, of the — existence of a second great Ape, called the ‘Ingena,’ “five feet high, and four across the shoulders,’ the builder of a rude house, on the outside of which it slept.
In 1847, Dr. Savage had the good fortune to make another and most important addition to our knowledge of the man-like Apes; for, being unexpectedly detained at the Gaboon river, he saw in the house of the Rev. Mr. Wilson, a missionary resident there, “a skull represented by the natives to be a monkey-like animal, remarkable for its size, ferocity, and habits.” From the contour of the skull, and the information | derived from several intelligent natives, “I was induced,” says | Dr. Savage, (using the term Orang in its old general sense)
“to believe that it belonged to a new species of Orang. I expressed this opinion to Mr. Wilson, with a desire for \ further investigation; and, if possible, to decide the point by
* See “Observations on the external characters and habits of the Troglodytes \ i niger, by Thomas N. Savage, M.D., and on its organization, by Jeffries Wyman, \ i M.D.,” Boston Journal of Natural History, Vol. IV. 1843-4; and “ External F characters, habits, and osteology of Troglodytes Gorilla,” by the same authors, | ibid, Vol. V. 1847.
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=
the inspection of a specimen alive or dead.” The result of the combined exertions of Messrs. Savage and Wilson was not only the obtaining of a very full account of the habits of this new creature, but a still more important service to science, the enabling the excellent American anatomist already men-
tioned, Professor Wyman, to describe, from ample materials, the distinctive osteological characters of the new form. This animal was called by the natives of the Gaboon “ Engé-ena,” a name obviously identical with the “Ingena” of Bowdich ; and Dr. Savage arrived at the conviction that this last discovered of all the great Apes was the long-sought ‘ Pongo’ of Battell.
The justice of this conclusion, indeed, is beyond doubt— for not only does the ‘Engé-ena’ agree with Battell’s ““oreater monster” in its hollow eyes, its great stature, and its dun or iron-grey colour, but the only other man-like Ape which in- habits these latitudes—the Chimpanzee—is at once identified, ‘by its smaller size, as the “lesser monster,” and is excluded from any possibility of being the ‘Pongo,’ by the fact that it is black and not dun, to say nothing of the important cir- cumstance already mentioned that it still retains the name of ‘ Engeko, or ‘ Enché-eko,’ by which Battell knew it.
In seeking for a specific name for the ‘Enge-ena,’ however, Dr. Savage wisely avoided the much misused ‘ Pongo’; but finding in the ancient Periplus of Hanno the word “Gorilla” applied to certain hairy savage people, discovered by the Carthaginian voyager in an island on the African coast, he attached the specific name “Gorilla” to his new ape, whence arises its present well-known appellation. But Dr. Savage, more cautious than some of his successors, by no means identifies his ape with Hanno’s ‘wild men’ He merely says that the latter were “probably one of the species of the Orang ;” and I quite agree with M. Brullé, that there is no ground for identifying the modern ‘ Gorilla’? with that of the Carthaginian admiral.
Since the memoir of Savage and Wyman was published,
23
the skeleton of the Gorilla has been investigated by Professor Owen and by the late Professor Duvernoy, of the Jardin des Plantes, the latter having further supplied a valuable account ‘of the muscular system and of many of the other soft parts ; while African missionaries and travellers have confirmed and expanded the account originally given of the habits of this
- great man-like Ape, which has had the singular fortune of being the first to be made known to the general world and the last to be scientifically investigated.
Two centuries and a half have passed away since Battell told his stories about the ‘ greater’ and the ‘lesser monsters’ to Purchas, and it has taken nearly that time to arrive at the clear result that there are four distinct kinds of Anthropoids —in Eastern Asia, the Gibbons and the Orangs; in Western Africa, the Chimpanzees and the Gorilla.
The man-like Apes, the history of whose discovery has
just been detailed, have certain characters of structure and of :
distribution in common. Thus they all have the same number of teeth as man—possessing four incisors, two canines, four false molars, and six true molars in each jaw, or 32 teeth in
all, in the adult condition; while the milk dentition consists.
of 20 teeth—or four incisors, two canines, and four molars in each jaw. They are what are called catarrhine Apes—that is, their nostrils have a narrow partition and look downwards ; and, furthermore, their arms are_always longer than their legs, the difference being sometimes greater and sometimes less; so that if the four were arranged in the order of the length of their arms in proportion to that of their legs, we should have this series—Orang (14—1), Gibbon (14—1), Gorilla (14—1), Chimpanzee (1j;5;—1). In all, the fore limbs are terminated by hands, provided with longer or shorter thumbs; while the great toe of the foot, always smaller than in Man, is far more moveable than in him and can be opposed, like a thumb, to the rest of the foot. None of these apes have tails, and none of them possess the cheek-pouches common
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24
among monkeys. Finally, they are all inhabitants of the old world.
The Gibbons are the smallest, slenderest, and longest- limbed of the man-like apes: their arms are longer in pro- portion to their bodies than those of any of the other man- like Apes, so that they can touch the ground when erect ; their hands are longer than their feet, and they are the only Anthropoids which possess callosities like the lower monkeys. They are variously coloured. The Orangs have arms which
, reach to the ankles in the erect position of the animal ; their
thumbs and great toes are very short, and their feet are longer than their hands. They are covered with reddish-brown hair,
and the sides of the face, in adult males, are commonly pro- duced into two crescentic, flexible excrescences, like fatty tu- mours, The Chimpanzees have arms which reach below the knees ; they have large thumbs and great toes, their hands are longer than their feet, and their hair is black, while the skin of the face is pale. The Gorilla, lastly, has arms which reach to the middle of the leg, large thumbs and great toes, feet longer than the hands, a black face, and dark-grey or dun hair,
For the purpose which I have at present in view, itis un- necessary that I should enter into any further minutize respecting the distinctive characters of the genera and species into which these man-like Apes are divided by naturalists. Suffice it to say, that the Orangs and the Gibbons constitute the distinct genera, Simia and Hylobates; while the Chim- panzees and Gorillas are by some regarded simply as distinct species of one genus, Troglodytes ; by others as distinct
_ genera—Troglodytes being reserved for the Chimpanzees, | and Gorilla for the Engé-ena or Pongo.
Sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like Apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure.
Once in a generation, a Wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through
25
the tropical wilds of America and of Asia; to form magnificent collections as he wanders; and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections: but, to the ordi- ~ nary explorer or collector, the dense forests of equatorial Asia and Africa, which constitute the favourite habitation of the Orang, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla, present difficulties of no ordinary magnitude: and the man who risks his life by even a short visit to the malarious shores of those regions may well be excused if he shrinks from facing the dangers of the interior; if he contents himself with stimulating the industry of the better seasoned natives, and collecting and collating the more or less mythical reports and traditions with which they are too ready to supply him.
In such a manner most of the earlier accounts of the habits of the man-like Apes originated; and even now a good deal of what passes current must be admitted to have no very safe foundation. The best information we possess is that, based almost wholly on direct European testimony, respecting the Gibbons ; the next best evidence relates to the Orangs; while our knowledge of the habits of the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla stands much in need of support and enlargement by additional testimony from instructed European eye-witnesses.
Tt will therefore be convenient in endeavouring to form a notion of what we are justified in believing about these ani- mals, to commence with the best known man-like Apes, the Gibbons and Orangs; and to make use of the perfectly reli- able information respecting them as a sort of criterion of the
probable truth or falsehood of assertions respecting the others.
Of the Grssons, half a dozen species are found scattered over the Asiatic islands, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and through Malacca, Siam, Arracan, and an uncertain extent of Hin- dostan, on the main land of Asia. The largest attain a few inches above three feet in height, from the crown to the heel, so that they are shorter than the other man-like Apes; while the slenderness of their bodies renders their mass far smaller in proportion even to this diminished height.
a nla ——a
3
who lived for many years in the Eastern Archipelago, and to
3
shall frequently
HI. pileatus), after Wolf.
(
states that the Gibbons are true
mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the _ hills
Fie. 8.—A Gibbon of whose personal experience I
a5 oa "S Foi 8 3 i= i) a | fon ee} Oo ro MR hes | i= = 2) oO oO iss] g fo] Hy o SED 5 S| fo} =| a S op 4 =
have occasion to refer,
the results
27
though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees. All day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees; and though, towards evening, they descend in small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they spy a man than they dart up the hill-sides, and disappear in the darker valleys. All observers testify to the prodigious volume of voice pos- sessed by these animals. According to the writer whom I have just cited, in one of them, the Siamang, “the voice is grave and penetrating, resembling the sounds gock, goek, goek, goek, goek ha haha ha haaaaa, and may easily be heard at a distance of half a league.” While the cry is being uttered,
the great membranous bag under the throat which commu- iB
nicates with the organ of voice, the so-called “laryngeal sac,” becomes greatly distended, diminishing again when the crea- ture relapses into silence. hed
~ M. Duvaucel, likewise, affirms that the cry of the Siamang may be heard for miles—making the woods ring again. So Mr. Martin* describes the cry of the agile Gibbon as “ over- powering and deafening ” in a room, and “ from its strength, well calculated for resounding through the vast forests.” Mr. Waterhouse, an accomplished musician as well as zoologist, says, “The Gibbon’s voice is certainly much more powerful than that of any singer I ever heard.” And yet it is to be recollected that this animal is not half the height of, and far less bulky in proportion than, a man.
There is good testimony that various species of Gibbon readily take to the erect posture. Mr. George Bennett,+ a very excellent observer, in describing the habits of a male Hylobates syndactylus which remained for some time in his possession, says; “ He invariably walks in the erect posture when on a level surface ; and then the arms either hang down, enabling him to assist himself with his knuckles; or what is more usual, he keeps his arms uplifted in nearly an erect position, with the hands pendent ready to seize a rope, and.
* “ Man and Monkies,” p. 423. + Wanderings in New South Wales, Vol. I, chap. viii. 1834,
28
climb up on the approach of danger or on the obtrusion of strangers. He walks rather quick in the erect posture, but with a waddling gait, and is soon run down if, whilst pursued, he has no opportunity of escaping by climbing. . . ., When - he walks in the erect posture he turns the leg and foot out- wards, which occasions him to have a waddling gait and to seem bow-legged.”
Dr. Burrough states of another Gibbon, the Horlack or Hooluk :
“They walk erect ; and when placed on the floor, or in an open field, balance themselves very prettily, by raising their hands over their head and slightly bending the arm at the wrist and elbow, and then run tolerably fast, rocking from side to side; and, if urged to greater speed, they let fall their hands to the ground, and assist themselves forward, rather jumping than running, still keeping the body, however, nearly erect.”
Somewhat different evidence, however, is given by Dr. Winslow Lewis: * ©
“Their only manner of walking was on their posterior or inferior extremities, the others being raised upwards to preserve their equilibrium, as rope-dancers are assisted by long poles at fairs. Their progression was not by placing one foot before the other, but by simultaneously using both, asin jumping.” Dr. Salomon Miiller also states that the Gibbons progress upon the ground by short series of tottering jumps, effected only by the hind limbs, the body being held alto- gether upright. —
But, Mr. Martin, (1. c. p. 418) who also speaks from direct observation, says of the Gibbons generally :
“Pre-eminently qualified for arboreal habits, and display- ing among the branches amazing activity, the Gibbons are not so awkward or embarrassed on a level surface as might be imagined. They walk erect, with a waddling or unsteady gait, but at a quick pace; the equilibrium of the body
* Boston Journal of Natural History, Vol. I. 1834,
Sa
29
requiring to be kept up, either by touching the ground with —
the knuckles, first on one side then on the other, or by up- lifting'the arms so as to poise it. As with the Chimpanzee, the whole of the narrow, long sole of the foot is placed upon the ground at once and raised at once, without any elasticity of step.”
After this mass of concurrent and independent testimony, it cannot reasonably be doubted that the Gibbons commonly and habitually assume the erect attitude.
But level ground is not the place where these animals can display their very remarkable and peculiar locomotive powers, and that prodigious activity which almost tempts one to rank them among flying, rather than among ordinary climbing mammals.
My. Martin (1. c. p. 430) has given so excellent and graphic an account of the movements of a Hylobates agilis, living in the Zoological Gardens, in 1840, that I will quote it in full:
“Tt is almost impossible to convey in words an idea of the quickness and graceful address of her movements: they may indeed be termed aerial, as she seems merely to touch in her progress the branches among which she exhibits her evolu- tions. In these feats her hands and arms are the sole organs of locomotion; her body hanging as if supended by a rope, sustained by one hand (the right, for example), she launches herself, by an energetic movement, to a distant branch, which she catches with the left hand; but her hold is less than momentary: the impulse for the next launch is ac- quired: the branch then aimed at is attained by the right hand again, and quitted instantaneously, and so on, in
alternate succession. In this manner spaces of twelve and eighteen feet are cleared, with the greatest ease and un- interruptedly, for hours together, without the slightest appearance of fatigue being manifested; and it is evident that, if more space could be allowed, distances very greatly exceeding eighteen feet would be as easily cleared ; so that Duvaucel’s assertion that he has seen these animals launch
30
themselves from one branch to another, forty feet asunder, startling as it is, may be well credited. Sometimes, on seizing a branch in her progress, she will throw herself, by the power of one arm only, completely round it, making a revolution with such rapidity as almost to deceive the eye, and continue her progress with undiminished velocity. It is singular to observe how suddenly this Gibbon can stop, when the impetus given by the rapidity and distance of her swinging leaps would seem to require a gradual abatement of her movements. In the very midst of her flight a branch is seized, the body raised, and she is seen, as if by magic, quietly seated on it, grasping it with her feet. As suddenly she again throws herself into action.
“The following facts will convey some notion of her dexterity and quickness. A live bird was let loose in her apartment ; she marked its flight, made a long swing to a distant branch, caught the bird with one hand in her passage, and attained the branch with her other hand; her aim, both at the bird and at the branch, being as successful as if one object only had engaged her attention. It may be added that she instantly bit off the head of the bird, picked its feathers, and then threw it down without attempting to eat it.
“On another occasion this animal swung herself from a perch, across a passage at least twelve feet wide, against a window which it was thought would be immediately broken : but not so; to the surprise of all, she caught the narrow framework between the panes with her hand, in an ~instant
attained the proper impetus, and sprang back again to the cage she had left—a feat requiring not only great strength, but the nicest precision.”
The Gibbons appear to be naturally very gentle, but there is very good evidence that they will bite severely when irri- tated—a female Hylobates agilis having so severely lacerated one man with her long canines, that he died; while she had
31
injured others so much that, by way of precaution, these formidable teeth had been filed down; but, if threatened, she would still turn on her keeper. The Gibbons eat insects, but appear generally to avoid animal food. A Siamang, however, was seen by Mr. Bennett to seize and devour greedily a live lizard. They commonly drink by dipping
their fingers in the liquid and then licking them. It is
asserted that they sleep in a sitting posture.
- Duvaucel affirms that he has seen the females carry their young to the waterside and there wash their faces, in spite of resistance and cries. They are gentle and affectionate in cap- tivity—full of tricks and pettishness, like spoiled children, and yet not devoid of a certain conscience, as an anecdote, told by Mr. Bennett (1. c. p. 156), will show. It would appear that his Gibbon had a peculiar inclination for disarranging things in the cabin. Among these articles, a piece of soap would especially attract his notice, and for the removal of this he had been once or twice scolded. “One morning,” says Mr. Bennett, “I was writing, the ape being present in the cabin, when casting my eyes towards him, I saw the little fellow taking the soap. I watched him without his perceiving that I did so: and he occasionally would cast a furtive glance ‘towards the place where I sat. I pretended to write; he, seeing me busily occupied, took the soap, and moved away with it in his paw. When he had walked half the length of the cabin, I spoke quietly, without frightening him. The in- stant he found I saw him, he walked back again, and deposited the soap nearly in the same place from whence he had taken it. There was certainly something more than instinct in that action: he evidently betrayed a consciousness of having done wrong both by his first and last actions—and what is reason if that is not an exercise of it ?”
The most elaborate account of the natural history of the Orane-Uran extant, is that given in the “ Verhandelingen
32
over de Natuurlijke Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche over- zeesche Bezittingen (1839-45),” by Dr. Salomon Miller and Dr. Schlegel, and I shall base what I have to say upon this
ue Aah Ui HH}
iy art URN) i NY ‘
Fie. 9.—An adult male Orang-Utan, after Miiller and Schlegel.
subject almost entirely on their statements, adding, here and there, particulars of interest from the writings of Brooke, Wallace, and others.
33
The Orang-Utan would rarely seem to exceed four feet in height, but the body is very bulky, ieaceneticty two-thirds of the height in circumference.*
The Orang-Utan is found only in Sumatra and Borneo, and is common in neither of these islands—in both of which it occurs always in low, flat plains, never in the mountains. It - loves the densest and most sombre of the forests, which ex- tend from the sea-shore inland, and thus is found only in the eastern half of Sumatra, where alone such forests occur, though, occasionally, it strays over to the western side.
On the other hand, it is generally distributed through
Borneo, except in the mountains, or where the population is dense. In favourable places, the hunter may, by good for- tune, see three or four in a day.
Except in the pairing time, the old males usually live by themselves. The old females, and the immature males, on the other hand, are often met with in twos and threes; and the former occasionally have young with them, though the pregnant females usually separate themselves, and sometimes remain apart after they have given birth to their offspring. The young Orangs seem to remain unusually long under their mother’s protection, probably in consequence of their slow growth. While climbing, the mother always carries her young
* The largest Orang-Utan, cited by Temminck, measured, when standing upright, four feet ; but he mentions having just received news of the capture of an Orang five feet three inches high. Schlegel and Miller say that their largest old male measured, upright, 1.25 Netherlands “el ;” and from the crown to the end of the toes, 1.5 el; the circumference of the body being about lel. The largest old female was 1.09 el high, when standing. The adult skeleton in the College of Surgeons’ Museum, if set upright, would stand 3 ft. 6-8 in. from crown to sole. Dr. Humphry gives 3 ft. 8in. as the mean height of two Orangs. Of seventeen Orangs examined by Mr. Wallace, the largest was 4 ft. 2 in. high, from the heel to the crown of the head. Mr. Spencer St. John, however, in his “ Life in the Forests of the Far East,” tells us of an Orang of “5 ft. 2 in., measur- ing fairly from the head to the heel,” 15 in. across the face, and 12 in. round the wrist. It does not appear, however, that Mr. St. John measured this Orang himself,
D
= si <li
| H i
ee
gh PE GRE
34.
| against. her. bosom, the young holding on by his mother’s hair.* At what time of life the Orang-Utan becomes capable
of propagation, and how long the females go with young,
-, is unknown, but it is probable that they are not adult until
they arrive at ten or fifteen years of age. A female which
_ lived for five years at Batavia, had not attained one-third the
height of the wild females. It is probable that, after reaching adult years, they go on growing, though slowly, and that they live to forty or fifty years. The Dyaks tell of old Orangs, which have not only lost all their teeth, but which find it so troublesome to climb, that they maintain themselves on windfalls and juicy herbage.
The Orang is sluggish, exhibiting none of that marvellous activity characteristic of the Gibbons. Hunger alone seems to stir him to exertion, and when it is stilled, he relapses into repose. When the animal sits, it curves its back and bows its head, so as to look straight down on the ground ; sometimes it holds on with its hands by a higher branch, sometimes lets them hang phlegmatically down by its side—and in these posi- tions the Orang will remain, for hours together, in the same spot, almost without stirring, and only now and then giving utterance to its deep, growling voice. By day, he usually climbs from one tree-top to another, and only at night descends to the ground, and if then threatened with danger, he seeks refuge among the underwood. When not hunted, he remains a long time in the same locality, and sometimes stops for many days on the same tree—a firm place among its branches serving him for a bed. It is rare for the Orang to pass the night in the summit of a large tree, probably because it is too windy and cold there for him ; but, as soon as night
draws on, he descends from the height and seeks out a fit bed
* See Mr. Wallace’s account of an infant “ Orang-utan,” inthe “ Annals of |
Natural History” for 1856. Mr. Wallace provided his interesting charge with
an artificial mother of buffalo-skin, but the cheat.was too successful. The infant’s entire experience led it to associate teats with hair, and feeling the latter, it spent its existence in vain endeavours to discover the former,
35 in the lower and darker part, or in the leafy top of a small tree, among which he prefers Nibong Palms, Pandani, or one of those parasitic Orchids which give the primeeval forests of Borneo so characteristic and striking an appearance. But wherever he determines to sleep, there he prepares himself a sort of nest: little boughs and leaves are drawn together -round the selected spot, and bent crosswise over one another ; while to make the bed soft, great leaves of Ferns, of Orchids, of Pandanus fascicularis, Nipa fruticans, &c., are laid over them. Those which Miller saw, many of them being very fresh, were situated at a height of ten to twenty-five feet above the ground, and had a circumference, on the average, of two or three feet. Some were packed many inches thick with Pandanus leaves; others were remarkable only for the cracked twigs, which, united in a common centre, formed a regular platform. ‘The rude hut,” says Sir James Brooke, “which they are stated to build in the trees, would be more properly called a seat or nest, for it has no roof or cover of any sort. The facility with which they form this nest is curious, and I had an opportunity of seeing a wounded female weave the branches together and seat herself, within a
minute.”’ Bas
According to the Dyaks the Orang rarely leaves his bed before the sun is well above the horizon and has dissipated the mists. He gets up about nine, and goes to bed again
about five; but sometimes not till late in the twilight. He | lies sometimes'on his back; or, by way of change, turns on | one side or the other, drawing his limbs up to his body, and :
resting his head on his hand. When the night is cold, windy, or rainy, he usually covers his body with a heap of Pandanus,
Nipa, or Fern leaves, like those of which his bed is made, and
he is especially careful to wrap up his head in them. It is this habit of covering himself up which has probably led to the fable that the Orang builds huts in the trees.
Although the Orang resides mostly amid the boughs of great : D2
a: a ee
36
trees, during the daytime, he is very rarely seen squatting on a thick branch, as other apes and particularly the Gibbons, do. The Orang, on the contrary, confines himself to the slender leafy branches, so that he is seen right at the top of the trees, a mode of life which is closely related to the constitu- tion of his hinder limbs, and especially to that of his seat. For this is provided with no callosities, such as are possessed by many of the lower apes, and even by the Gibbons; and those bones of the pelvis, which are termed the ischia, and which form the solid framework of the surface on which the body rests in the sitting posture, are not expanded like those of the apes which possess callosities, but are more like those of man.
An Orang climbs so slowly and cautiously,* as, in this act, to resemble a man more than an ape, taking great care of his feet, so that injury of them seems to affect him far more than it does other apes. Unlike the Gibbons, whose fore- arms do the greater part of the work, as they swing from branch to branch, the Orang never makes even the smallest jump. In climbing, he moves alternately one hand and one foot, or, after having laid fast hold with the hands, he draws up both feet together. In passing from one tree to another, he always seeks out a place where the twigs of both come close together, or interlace. Even when closely pursued, his circumspection is amazing: he shakes the branches to see if they will bear him, and then bending an overhanging bough down by throwing his weight gradually along it, he makes a bridge from the tree he wishes to quit to the next.+
On the ground the Orang always goes laboriously and shakily, on all fours. At starting he will run faster than a
* “They are the.slowest and least active of all the monkey tribe, and their motions are surprisingly awkward and uncouth.”—Sir James Brooke, in the “Proceedings of the Zoological Society,” 1841,
t Mr. Wallace’s account of the progression of the Orang almost exactly cor- responds with this,
man, though he may soon be overtaken. The very long arms which, when he runs, are but little bent, raise the body of the Orang remarkably, so that he assumes much the posture of a “very old man bent down by age, and making his way along by the help of a stick. In walking, the body is usually directed straight forward, unlike the other apes, which run more or less obliquely ; except the Gibbons, who in these, as in so many other respects, depart remarkably from their fellows. :
The Orang cannot put its feet flat on the ground, but is supported upon their outer edges, the heel resting more on the ground, while the curved toes partly rest upon the ground by the upper side of their first jot, the two outer- most toes of each foot completely resting on this surface. The hands are held in the opposite manner, their inner edges serving as the chief support. The fingers are then bent out in such a manner that their foremost joints, especially those of the two innermost fingers, rest upon the ground by their upper sides, while the point of the free and straight thumb serves as an additional fulcrum.
The Orang never stands on its’ hind legs, and all the pictures, representing it as so doing, are as false as the assertion that it defends itself with sticks, and the like.
The long arms are of especial use, not only in climbing, but in the gathering of food from boughs to which the animal could not trust his weight. Figs, blossoms, and young leaves of various kinds, constitute the chief nutriment of the Orang; but strips of bamboo two or three feet long were found in the stomach of a male. They are not known to eat living animals.
Although, when taken young, the Orang-Utan soon becomes domesticated, and indeed seems to court human society, it is naturally avery wild and shy animal, though apparently slug- gish and melancholy. The Dyaks affirm, that when the old males are wounded with arrows only, they will occasionally
38
leave the trees and rush raging upon their enemies, whose sole safety lies in instant flight, as they are sure to be killed if caught.*
But, though .possessed of immense strength, it is rare for the Orang to attempt to defend itself, especially when attacked with fire-arms. On such occasions he endeavours
to hide himself, or to escape along the topmost branches of the'trees, breaking off and throwing down the boughs as he goes. When wounded he betakes himself to the highest attainable point of the tree, and emits a singular cry, con- sisting at first of high notes, which at length deepen into a |) low roar, not unlike that of a panther. While giving out the || high notes the Orang thrusts out his lips into a funnel shape ;
* Sir James Brooke, in a letter to Mr. Waterhouse, published in the pro- ceedings of the Zoological Society for 1841, says:—“On the habits of the Orangs, as far as I have been able to observe them, I may remark that they are as dull and slothful as can well be conceived, and on no occasion, when pur- suing them, did they move so fast as to preclude my keeping pace with them easily through a moderately clear forest ; and even when obstructions below (such as wading up to the neck) allowed them to get away some distance, they were sure to stop and allow me to come up. I never observed the slightest
attempt at defence, and the wood which sometimes rattled about our ears was broken by their weight, and not thrown, as some persons represent. If pushed to extremity, however, the Pappan could not be otherwise than formidable, and one unfortunate man, who, with a party, was trying to catch a large one alive, lost two of his fingers, besides being severely bitten on the face, whilst the animal finally beat off his pursuers and escaped.”
Mr. Wallace, on the other hand, affirms that he has several times observed them throwing down branches when pursued. “Tt is true he does not throw them az a person, but casts them down vertically ; for it is evident that a bough cannot be thrown to any distance from the top of a lofty tree. In one case a
_ female Mias, on a durian tree, kept up for at least ten minutes a continuous shower of branches and of the heavy, spined fruits, as large as 32-pounders, which most effectually kept us clear of the tree she was on. She could be seen breaking them off and throwing them down with every appearance of rage, uttering at intervals a loud pumping grunt, and evidently meaning mischief.” “On the Habits of the Orang-Utan,” Annals of Nat. History. 1856. This statement, it will be observed, is quite in accordance with that contained in the letter of the Resident Palm quoted above (p. 16).
39
but in uttering the low notes he holds his mouth wide open, and at the same time the great throat bag, or laryngeal sac, becomes distended.
According to the Dyaks, the only animal the Orang mea- sures his strength with is the crocodile, who occasionally seizes him on his visits to the water side. But they say that the Orang is more than a match for his enemy, and beats him to death, or rips up his throat by pulling the jaws asunder !
Much of what has been here stated was probably derived by Dr. Miiller from the reports of his Dyak hunters; but a large male, four feet high, lived in captivity, under his obser- vation, for a month, and receives a very bad character.
“He was’a very wild beast,’? says Miiller, “of prodigious strength, and false and wicked to the last degree. If any one
approached he rose up slowly with a low growl, fixed his eyes”
in the direction in which he meant to make his attack, slowly passed his hand between the bars of his cage, and then extend- ing his long arm, gave a sudden grip—usually at the face.”
He never tried to bite (though Orangs will bite one another), .
his great weapons of offence and defence being his hands.
His intelligence was very great ; and Miller remarks, that though the faculties of the Orang have been estimated too highly, yet Cuvier, had he seen this specimen, would not have considered its intelligence to be only a little higher than that of the dog.
—
His hearing was very acute, but the sense of vision seemed |
to be less perfect. The under lip was the great organ of touch, + and played avery important part in drinking, being thrust
out like a trough, so as either to catch the falling rain, or to receive the contents of the half cocoa-nut shell full of water with which the Orang was supplied, and which, in drinking, he poured into the trough thus formed.
Tn Borneo the Orang-Utan of the Malays goes by the name of “Mias” among the Dyaks, who distinguish several kinds
as Mias Pappan, or Zimo, Mias Kassu, and Mias Rambi.
40
Whether these are distinct species, however, or whether they are mere races, and how far any of them are identical with the Sumatran Orang, as Mr. Wallace thinks the Mias Pappan to be, are problems which are at present undecided ; and the variability of these great apes is so extensive, that the settlement of the question is a matter of great diffi- culty. Of the form called “Mias Pappan,” Mr. Wallace* observes, “It is known by its large size, and by the lateral expansion of the face into fatty protuberances, or ridges, over the temporal muscles, which have been mis-termed cal- losities, as they are perfectly soft, smooth, and flexible. Five of this form, measured by me, varied only from 4 feet 1 inch to 4 feet 2 inches in height, from the heel to the crown of the head, the girth of the body from 3 feet to 3 feet 74 inches, and the extent of the outstretched arms from 7 feet 2 inches to 7 feet 6 inches; the width of the face from 10 to 132 inches. The colour and length of the hair varied in dif- ferent individuals, and in different parts of the same indi- vidual; some possessed a rudimentary nail on the great toe, others none at all; but they otherwise present no external differences on which to establish even varieties of a species. Yet, when we examine the crania of these individuals, we | find remarkable differences of form, proportion, and dimen- | sion, no two being exactly alike. The slope of the profile, "and the projection of the muzzle, together with the size of the cranium, offer differences as decided as those existing between the most strongly marked forms of the Caucasian and African crania in the human species. The orbits vary in width and height, the cranial ridge is either single or double, either much or little developed, and the zygomatic aperture varies considerably in size. This variation in the proportions of the crania enables us satisfactorily to explain the marked difference presented by the single-crested and
* On the Orang-Utan, or Mias of Borneo, Annals of Natural History, 1856.
41
double-crested skulls, which have been thought to prove the existence of two large species of Orang. The external sur- face of the skull varies considerably in size, as do also the zygomatic aperture and the temporal muscle; but they bear no necessary relation to each other, a small muscle often existing with a large cranial surface, ‘and vice versd. Now,
those skulls which have the largest and strongest jaws and_
the widest zygomatic aperture, have the muscles so large that they meet on the crown of the skull, and deposit the bony ridge which separates them, and which is the highest in that which has the smallest cranial surface. In those which combine a large surface with comparatively weak jaws, and small zygomatic aperture, the muscles, on each side, do not extend to the crown, a space of from 1 to 2 inches re- maining between them, and along their margins small ridges are formed. Intermediate forms are found, in which the ridges meet only in the hinder part of the skull. The form and size of the ridges are therefore independent of age, being sometimes more strongly developed in the less aged animal. Professor Temminck states that the series of skulls in the Leyden Museum shows the same result.”
Mr. Wallace observed two male adult Orangs (Mias Kassu of the Dyaks), however, so very different from any of these that he concludes them to be specifically distinct ; they were respectively 3 feet 84 in. and 3 feet 95 inches high, and pos- sessed no sign of the cheek excrescences, but otherwise re- sembled the larger kinds. The skull has no crest, but two bony ridges, 13 inches to 2 inches apart, as in the Simia morio of Professor Owen. The teeth, however, are im-
mense, equalling or surpassing those of the other species. The females of both these kinds, according to Mr. Wallace, are devoid of excrescences, and resemble the smaller males, but are shorter by 14 to 3 inches, and their canine teeth are comparatively small, subtruncated and dilated at the base, as in the so-called Simia morio, which is, in all probability, the skull of a female of the same species as the smaller males,
42
Both males and females of this smaller species are distin- guishable, according to Mr. Wallace, by the comparatively large size of the middle incisors of the upper jaw.
So far as I am aware, no one has attempted to dispute the accuracy of the statements which I have just quoted regarding the habits of the two Asiatic man-like Apes; and if true, they must be admitted as evidence, that such an Ape—
Istly, May readily move along the ground in the erect, or semi-erect, position, and without direct support from its arms.
2ndly, That it may possess an extremely loud voice, so loud as to be readily heard one or two miles.
3rdly, That it may be capable of great viciousness and violence when irritated: and this is especially true of adult males.
A4thly, That it may build a nest to sleep in.
Such being well-established facts respecting the Asiatic Anthropoids, analogy alone might justify us in expecting the African species to offer similar peculiarities, separately or
combined ; or, at any rate, would destroy the force of any attempted @ priori argument against such direct testimony as might be adduced in favour of their existence. And, if the or- - ganization of any of the African Apes could be demonstrated to fit it better than either of its Asiatic allies for the erect position and for efficient attack, there would be still less
reason for doubting its occasional adoption of the upright atti- tude or of aggressive proceedings.
From the time of Tyson and Tulpius downwards, the habits of the young Carmpanzrz in a state of captivity have been abundantly reported and commented upon. But trustworthy evidence as to the manners and customs of adult anthropoids of this species, in their native woods, was almost wanting up to the time of the publication of the paper by Dr. Savage, to which I have already referred ; containing notes of the observations which he made, and of , the information which he collected from sources which he
43
considered trustworthy, while resident at Cape Palmas, at the north-western limit of the Bight of Benin.
The adult Chimpanzees, measured by Dr. Savage, never exceeded, though the males may almost attain, five feet in height.
“When at rest, the sitting posture is that generally assumed. They are sometimes seen standing and walking, but when thus detected, they immediately take to all fours, and flee from the presence of the observer. Such is their organization that they cannot ‘stand erect, but lean forward. Hence they are seen, when standing, with the hands clasped over the occiput, or the lumbar region, which would seem necessary to balance or ease of posture.
“The toes of the adult are strongly flexed and turned inwards, and cannot be perfectly straightened. In the attempt the skin gathers into thick folds on the back, shew- ing that the full expansion of the foot, as is necessary in walking, is unnatural. The natural position is on all fours, the body anteriorly resting upon the knuckles, These are greatly enlarged, with the skin protuberant and thickened like the sole of the foot.
“They are expert climbers, as one would suppose from their organization. In their gambols they swing from limb to limb to a great distance, and leap with astonishing agility. It is not unusual to see the ‘old folks’ (Gn the language of an observer) sitting under a tree regaling themselves with fruit and friendly chat, while their ‘children’ are leaping around them, and swinging from tree to tree with boisterous merriment.
“ As seen here, they cannot be called gregarious, seldom more than five, or ten at most, being found together. It has been said, on good authority, that they occasionally assemble in large numberg, in gambols. My informant ;— asserts that he saw once not less than fifty so engaged ; | hooting, screaming, and drumming. with sticks upon old | logs, which is done in the latter case with equal facility
44.
by the four extremities. They do not appear ever to act on the offensive, and seldom, if ever really, on the defensive. When about to be captured, they resist by throwing their arms about their opponent, and attempting to draw him into contact with their teeth.” (Savage, 1. c. p. 384.)
With respect to this last point Dr. Savage is very explicit in another place ;
“‘ Biting is their principal art of defence. I have seen one man who had been thus severely wounded in the feet.
“The strong development of the canine teeth in the adult would seem to indicate a carnivorous propensity ; but in no state save that of domestication do they manifest it. At first they reject flesh, but easily acquire a fondness for it. The canines are early developed, and evidently designed to act the important part of weapons of defence. | When in contact with man almost the first effort of the animal is—to bite.
“They avoid the abodes of men, and build their habita- tions in trees. Their construction is more that of. nests than /uts, as they have been erroneously termed by some naturalists. They generally build not far above the ground. Branches or twigs are bent, or partly broken, and crossed, and the whole supported by the body of a limb or a crotch. Sometimes a nest will be found near the end of a strong leafy branch twenty or thirty feet from the ground. One I have lately seen that could not be less than forty feet, and more probably it was fifty. But this is an unusual height. .
“Their dwelling-place is not permanent, but changed in pursuit of food and solitude, according to the force of circumstances. We more often see them in elevated places ;: but this arises from the fact that the low grounds, being more favourable for the nativeg? rice-farms, are the oftener cleared, and hence are almost always wanting in suitable trees for their nests. . .. . It is seldom that more than one or two nests are seen upon the same tree, or in the
45
same ‘neighbourhood: five have been found, but it was an unusual circumstance.” . 2... . «%
«They are very filthy in their habits. .... It is a tradition with: the natives generally here, that they were once members of their own tribe: that for their depraved habits they were expelled from all human society, and,
that through an obstinate indulgence of their vile pro-—
pensities, they have degenerated into their present state and organization. They are, however, eaten by them, and when cooked with the oil and pulp of the palm-nut considered a highly palatable morsel. | “They exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence in their habits, and, on the part of the mother, much affection for their young. The second female described was upon a tree when first discovered, with her mate and two young ones (a male and a female). Her first impulse was to descend with
great rapidity, and make off into the thicket, with her mate |
and female offspring. The young male remaining behind, she soon returned to the rescue. She ascended and took him in her arms, at which moment she was shot, the ball passing through the fore-arm of the young one, on its way to the heart of the mother .....
“ In a recent case, the mother, when discovered, remained upon the tree with her offspring, watching intently the move- ments of the hunter. As he took aim, she motioned with her hand, precisely in the manner of a human being, to have him desist and go away. When the wound has not proved instantly fatal, they have been known to stop the flow of blood by pressing with the hand upon the part, and when
this did not succeed, to apply leaves and grass . . . . When | shot, they give a sudden screech, not unlike that of a human 1)
being in sudden and acute distress.”
The ordinary voice of the Chimpanzee, however, is affirmed to be hoarse, guttural, and not very loud, somewhat like “whoo-whoo.” (1. c. p. 365.)
The analogy of the Chimpanzee to the Orang, in its nest-
sot Neamt. nenccrennc ene te
46
building habit and in the mode of forming its nest, is exceed- ingly interesting; while, on the other hand, the activity of this ape, and its tendency to bite, are particulars in which it rather resembles the Gibbons. In extent of geographical range, again, the Chimpanzees—which are found from Sierra Leone to Congo—remind one of the Gibbons, rather than of either of the other man-like apes; and it seems not unlikely that, as is the case with the Gibbons, there may be several species spread over the geographical area of the genus.
The same excellent observer, from whom I have borrowed the preceding account of the habits of the adult Chimpanzee, published, fifteen years ago,* an account of the GoRILLA, which has, in its most essential points, been confirmed by subsequent observers, and to which so very little has really been added, that in justice to Dr. Savage I give it almost in full.
“Tt should be borne in mind that my account is based upon the statements of the aborigines of that region (the Gaboon). In this connection, it may also be proper for me to remark, that having been a missionary resident for several years, studying, from habitual intercourse, the African mind and character, I felt myself prepared to discriminate and decide upon the probability of their statements. Besides, being familiar with the history and habits of its interest- ing congener (Trog. niger, Geoff.), I was able to separate their accounts of the two animals, which, having the same locality and a similarity of habit, are confounded in the minds of the mass, especially as but few—such as traders to the interior and huntsmen—have ever seen the animal in question,
The tribe from which our knowledge of the animal is derived, and whose territory forms its habitat, is the Mpongwe, occupying both banks of the River Gaboon, from its mouth to some fifty or sixty miles upward
* Notice of the external characters and habits of Troglodytes Gorilla, Boston Journal of Natural we 1847.
lan
If the word “ Pongo” be of African origin, it is probably a corruption of the word Mpongwe, the name of the tribe on the banks of the Gaboon, and hence applied to the region
SSSERSSARE
Wo TAN Hi
Fic. 10.—The Gorilla, after Wolf.
they inhabit. Their local name for the Chimpanzee is Enché-eko, as near as it can be. Anglicized, from which the
common term “Jocko” probably comes. The. Mpongwe
appellation for its new congener is Engé-ena, prolonging
‘er
48
the sound of the first vowel, and slightly sounding the second.
The habitat of the Engé-ena is the interior of lower Guinea, whilst that of the Hnché-eko is nearer the sea-board.
Its height is about five feet ; it is disproportionately broad across the shoulders, thickly covered with coarse black hair, which is said to be similar in its arrangement to that of the Linché-eko ; with age it becomes gray, which fact has given rise to the report that both animals are seen of different colours.
Head.—The prominent features of the head are, the great width and elongation of the face,the depth of the molar region, the branches of the lower jaw being very deep and extending far backward, and the comparative smallness of the cranial portion; the eyes are very large, and said to be like those of the Enché-eko, a bright hazel ; nose broad and flat, slightly elevated towards the root; the muzzle broad, and prominent lips and chin, with scattered gray hairs; the under lip highly mobile, and eapable of great elongation when the animal is
ears eked, and of a dark brown, approaching to black.
The most remarkable feature of the head is a high ridge, or crest of hair, in the course of the sagittal suture, which meets posteriorly with a transverse ridge of the same, but less prominent, running round from the back of one ear to the other. The animal has the power of moving the scalp freely forward and back, and when enraged is said to contract it strongly over the brow, thus bringing down the hairy ridge , and pointing the hair forward, so as to present an indescri- \ bably ferocious aspect.
Neck short, thick, and hairy; chest and shoulders very broad, said to be fully double the size of the Enché-ekos; arms very long, reaching some way below the knee—the fore-arm much the shortest; hands very large, the thumbs much larger than the fingers The gait is shuffling; the motion of the body, which is
49
never upright as in man, but bent forward, is somewhat rolling, or from side to side. The arms being longer than the Chimpanzee, it does not stoop as much in walking ; like that ani- mal, it makes progres- sion by thrusting its arms forward, resting the hands on_ the ground, and then giving the body a half jumping half swinging motion between them. In this act it is said not to flex the fingers, as does the Chim- panzee, resting on its knuckles, but to extend them, making | . a fulcrum of the hand. When it assumes the walking pos- / ture, to which it is said to be much inclined, it balances its | huge body by flexing its arms upward. ; They live in bands, but are not so numerous as the Chim- i | panzees: the females generally exceed the other sex in
. : Fig. 11.—Gorilla walking (after Wolff.)
number. My informants all ‘agree in the assertion that but+
| | one adult male is seen in a band; that when the young males | grow up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community.” Dr. Savage repudiates the stories about the Gorillas carrying off women and vanquishing elephants, and then adds— . “Their dwellings, if they may be so called, are similar to \ those of the Chimpanzee, consisting simply of a few sticks | and leafy branches, supported by the crotches and limbs of trees: they afford no shelter, and are occupied only at night. «They are exceedingly ferocious, and always offensive in their habits, never running from man, as does the Chim- panzee. They are objects of terror to the natives, and are
never encountered by them except on the defensive. The few E
50
that have been captured were killed by elephant-hunters and native traders, as they came suddenly upon them while passing through the forests.
“Jt is said that when the male is first seen he gives a terrific yell, that resounds far and wide through the forest,
oneness
gomething like kh—ah! kh—ah! prolonged and shrill. His enormous jaws are widely opened at each expiration, his under lip hangs over the chin, and the hairy ridge and scalp are contracted upon the brow, presenting an aspect of indescribable ferocity.
“The females and young, at the first cry, quickly dis- appear. He then approaches the enemy in great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick succession. The hunter awaits his approach with his gun extended: if his aim is not sure, he permits the animal to grasp the barrel, and as he carries it to his mouth (which is his habit) he fires. Should the gun fail to go off, the barrel (that of the ordinary musket, which is thin) is crushed between his teeth, and the encounter soon proves fatal to the hunter.
“In the wild state, their habits are in general like those of the Troglodytes niger, building their nests loosely in trees, living on similar fruits, and changing their place of resort from force of circumstances.”
Dr. Savage’s observations were confirmed and supple- mented by those of Mr. Ford, who communicated an inter- esting paper on the Gorilla to the Philadelphian Academy of Sciences, in 1852. With respect to the geographical distri- bution of this greatest of all the man-like Apes, Mr. Ford remarks :
“This animal inhabits the range of mountains that traverse the interior of Guinea, from the Cameroon in the north, to Angola in the south, and about 100 miles inland, and called by the geographers Crystal Mountains. The limit to which this animal extends, either north or south, I am unable to define. But that limit is doubtless some distance north of this river [Gaboon]. I was able to certify
51
myself of this fact ima late excursion to the head-waters of the Mooney (Danger) River, which comes into the sea some sixty miles from this place. I was informed (credibly, I think,) that they were numerous among the mountains in which that river rises, and far north of that.
“Tn the south, this species extends to the Congo River, as I am told by native traders who have visited the coast between the Gaboon and that river. Beyond that, I am not informed. This animal is only found at a distance from the coast in most cases, and, according to my best information, approaches it nowhere so nearly as on the south side of this river, where they have been found within ten miles of the sea. This, however, is only of late occur- rence. I am informed by some of the oldest Mpongwe men that formerly he was only found on the sources of the river, but that at present he may be found within half-a-day’s walk of its mouth. Formerly he inhabited the mountainous ridge where Bushmen alone inhabited, but now he boldly
_approaches the Mpongwe plantations. This is doubtiess the
reason of the scarcity of information in years past, as the opportunities for receiving a knowledge of the animal have ; not been wanting ; traders having for one hundred years fre- quented this river, and specimens, such as have been brought here within a year, could not have been exhibited without having attracted the attention of the most stupid.”
One specimen Mr. Ford examined weighed 170lbs., without the thoracic, or pelvic, viscera, and measured four feet four inches round the chest. This writer describes so minutely and graphically the onslaught of the Gorilla— though he does not for a moment pretend to have witnessed. the scene—that Iam tempted to give this part of his paper in full, for comparison with other narratives :
“He always rises to his fect when making an attack, though he approaches his antagonist in a stooping posture.
“Though he never lies in wait, yet, when he hears, sees,
or scents a man, he immediately utters his characteristic cry, E 2
52
prepares for an attack, and always acts on the offensive. The cry he utters resembles a grunt more than a growl, and is similar to the cry of the Chimpanzee, when irritated, but vastly louder. It is said to be audible at a great distance. His preparation consists in attending the females and young ones, by whom he is usually accompanied, to a little distance.
| He, however, soon returns, with his crest erect and projecting | forward, his nostrils dilated, and his under-lip thrown down;
| at the same time uttering his characteristic yell, designed, it would seem, to terrify his antagonist. Instantly, unless he is disabled by a well-directed shot, he makes an onset, and, striking his antagonist with the palm of his hands, or seizing him with a grasp from which there is no escape, he dashes him upon the ground, and lacerates him with his tusks.
“He is said to seize a musket, and instantly crush the barrel between his teeth, . . . . . This animal’s savage nature is very well shewn by the implacable despera- tion of a young one that was brought here. It was taken very young, and kept four months, and many means were used to tame it; but it was incorrigible, so that it bit me an ~ hour before it died.”
Mr. Ford discredits the house-building and elephant- driving stories, and says that no well-informed natives believe them. They are tales told to children.
I might quote other testimony to a similar effect, but, as it appears to me, less carefully weighed and sifted, from the letters of MM. Franquet and Gautier Laboullay, appended to the memoir of M. 1. G. St. Hilaire, which I have already cited.
Bearing in mind what is known regarding the Orang and the Gibbon, the statements of Dr. Savage and Mr. Ford do not appear to me to be justly open to criticism on @ priori grounds. The Gibbons, as we have seen, readily assume the erect posture, but the Gorilla is far better fitted by its organization for that attitude than are the Gibbons: if the aryngeal pouches of the Gibbons, as is very likely, are
53
important in giving volume to a voice which can be heard for half a league, the Gorilla, which has similar sacs, more largely developed, and whose bulk is fivefold that of a Gibbon, may well be audible for twice that distance. If the Orang fights with its hands, the Gibbons and Chim- panzees with their teeth, the Gorilla may, probably enough, do either or both; nor is there anything to be said against either Chimpanzee or Gorilla building a nest, when it is proved that the Orang-Utan habitually performs that feat.
‘With all this evidence, now ten to fifteen years old, before the world, it is not a little surprising that the assertions of a recent traveller, who, so far as the Gorilla is concerned, really does very little more than repeat, on his own authority, the statements of Savage and of Ford, should have met with so much and such bitter opposition. If subtraction be made of what was known before, the sum and substance of what M. Du Chaillu has affirmed as a matter of his own observation respecting the Gorilla, is, that, in advancing to the attack, the great brute beats his chest with his fists. I confess I see nothing very improbable, or very much worth disputing about, in this statement.
With respect to the other man-like Apes of Africa, M. Du Chaillu tells us absolutely nothing, of his own knowledge, regarding the common Chimpanzee ; but he informs us of a bald-headed species or variety, the nschiego mbouve, which builds itself a shelter, and of another rare kind with a comparatively small face, large facial angle, and peculiar note, resembling “ Kooloo.”
As the Orang shelters itself with a rough coverlet of leaves, and the common Chimpanzee, according to that eminently trustworthy observer Dr. Savage, makes a sound
like “Whoo-whoo,”—the grounds of the summary repudiation
with which M. Du Chaillu’s statements on these matters have been met is not obvious.
If I have abstained from quoting M. Du Chaillu’s work, then, it is not because I discern any inherent improbability
| ‘ 9
gms AA peer .
54
in his assertions respecting the man-like Apes; nor from any wish to throw suspicion on his veracity ; but because, in my opinion, so long as his narrative remains in its present state of unexplained and apparently inexplicable confusion, it has no claim to original authority respecting any subject whatsoever.
It may be truth, but it is not evidence.
3 " ar
Or or
African Cannibalism in the Sixteenth Century.
In turning over Pigafetta’s version of the narrative of Lopez, which I have quoted _ above, I came upon so cu- rious and unexpected an an- ticipation, by some two cen- turies and a half, of one of the most startling parts of M. Du Chaillu’s narrative, that I cannot refrain from drawing attention to it in a note, al- though I must confess that the subject is not strictly re- levant to the matter in hand.
Tn the fifth chapter of the first book of the “Descriptio,” “Concerning the northern. part of the Kingdom of Congo and its boundaries,” is men- tioned a people whose king is called ‘Maniloango,’ and who. live under the equator, and as far westward as Cape Lopez. This appears. to: be the coun- try now inhabited by the Ogobai and Bakalai accord- ing to M. Du Chaillu.—“Be- yond these dwell another
Pos S : os WAZ Se people called ‘ Anziques, of a = incredible ferocity, for they eat one another, sparing nei-~ ther friends nor relations.” These people are armed with small bows bound tightly round with snake skins, and strung with a reed or rush. ‘Their arrows, short and slender, but made of hard wood, are shot with great rapidity. They have iron axes, the handles of which are bound round with snake skins, and swords with scabbards of the same material ; for defensive armour they employ elephant hides. They cut their skins when young, so as to produce scars. “ Their butchers’ shops are filled with
Fig. 12,—Butcher’s Shop of the Anziques, Anno 1598.
?
seiuniaiennaeistsisasnbitiahauintnanniaate
56
human flesh instead of that of oxen or sheep. For they eat the enemies whom they take in battle. They fatten, slay and devour their slaves also, unless they think they shall get a good price for them ; and, moreover, sometimes for weariness of life or desire of glory (for they think it a great thing and the sign of a gener- ous soul to despise life), or for love of their rulers, offer themselves up for food.”
“ There areindeed many cannibals, asin the Eastern Indies and in Brazil and elsewhere, but none such as these, since the others only eat their enemies, but
these their own blood relations.”
The careful illustrators of Pigafetta have done their best to enable the reader to realize this account of the ‘ Anziques,’ and the unexampled butcher’s shop represented in fig. 12, is a facsimile of part of their Plate XII.
M. Du Chaillu’s account of the Fans accords most singularly with what Lopez here narrates of the Anziques. He speaks of their small crossbows and little arrows, of their axes and knives, “ingeniously sheathed in snake skins.” “They
tattoo themselves more than any other tribes I have met north of the equator.” And all the world knows what M. Du Chaillu says of their cannibalism—*“ Pre- sently we passed a woman who solved all doubt. She bore with her a piece of the thigh of a human body, just as we should go to market and carry thence a roast or steak.” M. Du Chaillu’s artist cannot generally be accused of any want of courage in embodying the statements of his author, and it is to be regretted that, with so good an excuse, he has not furnished us with a fitting companion to the sketch of the brothers De Bry.
PRES ame igh
Il.—ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN TO THE LOWER ANIMALS.
Multis videri poterit, majorem esse differentiam Simix et Hominis, quam diei et noctis; verum tamen hi, comparatione instituta inter summos Huropse Heroés et Hottentottos ad Caput bone spei degentes, difficillime sibi per- suadebunt, has eosdem habere natales; vel si virginem nobilem aulicam, maxime comtam et humanissimam, conferre vellent cum homine sylvestri et sibi relicto, vix augurari possent, hunc et illam ejusdem esse speciei.— Linnei Amenitates Acad. “ Anthropomorpha.”
THe question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies
in nature and of his relations to the universe of things.
Whence our race has come; what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature’s power over us; to what goal we are tending; are the problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world. Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of re- spected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the mere spirit of scepticism, are unable to follow in the well-worn and comfortable track of their forefathers and con- temporaries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their own. The sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the
~ atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress
a ata a
nN tt AE RC
i nsartpeihanaicialistiaa tase
98
and governance of things: the men of genius propound solu- tions which grow into systems of Theology or of Philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the Poetry of an epoch.
Hach such answer to the great question, invariably as- serted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty : but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth—tolerable chiefly on ac- count of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.
In a well-worn metaphor, a parallel is drawn between the life of man and the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly ; but the comparison may be more just as well as more novel, if for its former term we take the mental progress of the race. History shows that the human mind, fed by con- stant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at in- tervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another, itself but temporary. Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is astep gained, and of such there have been many.
Since the revival of learning, whereby the Western races of Europe were enabled to enter upon that progress towards true knowledge, which was commenced by the philosophers of Greece, but was almost arrested in subsequent long ages of in- tellectual stagnation, or, at most, gyration, the human larva has
been feeding vigorously, and moulting in proportion. A skin of some dimension was cast in the 16th century, and another towards the end of the 18th, while, within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent.
59
But this is a process not unusually accompanied by many throes and some sickness and debility, or, it may be, by graver disturbances; so that every good citizen must feel bound to facilitate the process, and even if he have nothing but a scalpel to work withal, to ease the cracking integument to the best of his ability.
In this duty lies my excuse for the publication of these essays. For it will be admitted that some knowledge of man’s position in the animate world is an indispensable pre- liminary to the proper understanding of his relations to the universe—and this again resolves itself, in the long run, into an inquiry into the nature and the closeness of the ties which connect him with those singular creatures whose history* has been sketched in the preceding pages.
The importance of such an inquiry is indeed intuitively
manifest. Brought face to face with these blurred copies of \
himself, the least thoughtful of men is conscious of a certain shock, due perhaps, not so much to disgust at the aspect of
what looks like an insulting caricature, as to the awakening
of a sudden and profound mistrust of time-honoured theories and strongly-rooted prejudices regarding his own position in nature, and his relations to the under-world of life ; while that which remains a dim suspicion for the unthinking, becomes a vast argument, fraught with the deepest consequences, for all who are acquainted with the recent progress of the anato- mical and physiological sciences.
I now propose briefly to unfold that argument, and to set forth, in a form intelligible to those who possess no special acquaintance with anatomical science, the chief facts upon which all conclusions respecting the nature and the extent of the bonds which connect man with the brute world must be based: I shall then indicate the one immediate conclusion which, in my judgment, is justified by those facts, and I shall
* Tt will be understood that, in the preceding Essay, I have selected for notice from the vast mass of papers which have been written upon the man-like Apes, only those which scem to me to be of special moment.
TS =
~ eee Oe Cee eee
60
finally discuss the bearing of that conclusion upon the hypo- theses which have been entertained respecting the Origin of
Man.
The facts to which I would first direct the reader’s atten- tion, though ignored by many of the professed instructors of the public mind, are easy of demonstration and are univer- sally agreed to by men of science; while their significance is so great, that whoso has duly pondered over them will, I think, find little to startle him in the other revelations of Biology. I refer to those facts which have been made known by the study of Development.
It is a truth of very wide, if not of universal, application,
that every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually
attains.
The oak is a more complex thing than the little rudi- mentary plant contained in the acorn; the caterpillar is more complex than the egg; the butterfly than the cater- pillar; and each of these beings, in passing from its rudi- mentary to its perfect condition, runs through a series of changes, the sum of which is called its Development. In the higher animals these changes are extremely complicated ; but, within the last half century, the labours of such men as Von Baer, Rathke, Reichert, Bischof, and Remak, have almost completely unravelled them, so that the successive stages of development which are exhibited by a Dog, for example, are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silk-worm moth to the school-boy. It will be useful to consider with attention the nature and the order of the stages of canine development, as an ex- ample of the process in the higher animals generally.
The Dog, like all animals, save the very lowest (and further inquiries may not improbably remove the apparent exception), commences its existence as an egg: as a body which is, in every sense, as much an egg as that of a hen, but is devoid of
61
that accumulation of nutritive matter which confers upon
the bird’s egg its exceptional size and domestic utility; and wants the shell, which would not only be useless to an
animal incubated within the body of its parent, but would
cut it off from access to the source of that nutriment
which the young creature requires, but which the minute egg
of the mammal does not contain within itself.
The Dog’s egg is, in fact, a little spheroidal bag (Fig. 13), formed of a delicate transparent membrane called the vitelline membrane, and about =4, to zi>th of an inch in diameter. It contains a mass of viscid nutritive matter—the ‘yelk’ —within which is inclosed a second much more delicate spheroidal bag, called the ‘germinal vesicle’ (a). un this, lastly, hes a more
solid rounded. body, termed the ‘ germinal spot ? (db).
Fie, 13.—A. Egg of the Dog, with the vitelline membrane burst, so as to give exit to the yelk, the germinal vesicle (a), and its included spot (0). B.C.D.E.F. Successive changes of the yelk indicated in the text. After Bischoff.
The egg, or ‘Ovum,’ is originally formed within a gland, from which, in due season, it becomes detached, and passes ‘into the living chamber fitted for its protection and main- tenance during the protracted process of gestation. Here,
wa nell says,
62
when subjected to the required conditions, this minute and apparently insignificant particle of living matter, becomes animated by a new and mysterious activity. The germinal vesicle and spot cease to be discernible (their precise fate being one of the yet unsolved problems of embryology), but the yelk becomes circumferentially indented, as if an in- visible knife had been drawn round it, and thus appears divided into two hemispheres (Fig. 13, C).
By the repetition of this process in various planes, these hemispheres become subdivided, so that four segments are produced (D) ; and these, in like manner, divide and subdivide again, until the whole yelk is converted into a mass of granules, each of which consists of a minute spheroid of yelk-substance, inclosing @ central particle, the so-called ‘nucleus’ (F). Nature, by this process, has attained much the same result as that at which a human artificer arrives by his operations in a brick field. She takes the rough plastic ma- terial of the yelk and breaks it up into well-shaped tolerably eyen-sized masses—handy for building up into any part of the living edifice.
Next, the mass of organic bricks, or ‘cells’ as they are technically called, thus formed, acquires an orderly arrange- ment, becoming converted into a hollow spheroid with double walls, Then, upon one side of this spheroid, appears a thickening, and, by and bye, in the centre of the area of thickening, a straight shallow groove (Fig. 14, A) marks the central line of the edifice which is to be raised, or, in other words, indicates the position of the middle line of the body of the future dog. The substance bounding the groove on each side next rises up into a fold, the rudiment of the side wall of that long cavity, which will eventually lodge the spinal marrow and the brain; and in the floor of this chamber ap- pears a solid cellular cord, the so-called ‘notochord? One end of the inclosed cavity dilates to form the head (Fig.14, B), the other remains ‘narrow, and eventually becomes the tail ; the side walls of the body are fashioned out of the downward
63
continuation of the walls of the groove; and from them, by and bye, grow out little buds which, by degrees, assume the shape of limbs. Watching the fashioning process stage by stage, one is forcibly reminded of the modeller in clay. Every part, every organ, is at first, as it were, pinched up rudely, and sketched out in the rough; then shaped more accurately; and only, at last, receives the touches which stamp its final character.
Thus, at length, the young puppy assumes such a form as is shewn in Fig. 14, C. In this condition it has a dispro-
Ne e——EEe
Fre. 14.—A. Earliest rudiment of the Dog. B. Rudiment further advanced, showing the foundations of the head, tail, and vertebral column. -C. The very young puppy, with attached ends of the yelk-sac and allantois, and invested in the amnion.
bud-like limbs are unlike his legs. The remains of the yelk, which have not yet been applied to the nutrition and growth of the young animal, are con- . tained in a sac attached to the rudimentary intestine, and termed the yelk sac, or ‘umbilical vesicle.” Two membranous | bags, intended to subserve respectively the protection and nutrition of the young creature, have been developed from the skin and from the under and hinder surface of the body ;
portionately large head, as dissimilar to that of a dog as the
64
the former, the so-called ‘ amnion, is a sac filled with fluid, which invests the whole body of the embryo, and plays the part of a sort of water-bed for it; the other, termed the ‘allantois,’ grows out, loaded with blood-vessels, from the ventral region, and eventually applying itself to the walls of the cavity, in which the developing organism is contained, enables these vessels to become the channel by which the stream of nutriment, required to supply the wants of the off- spring, is furnished to it by the parent.
The structure which is developed by the interlacement of the vessels of the offspring with those of the parent, and by means of which the former is enabled to receive nourishment and to get rid of effete matters, is termed the ‘ Placenta,’
It would be tedious, and it is unnecessary for my present purpose, to trace the process of development further; suffice it to say, that, by a long and gradual series of changes, the rudiment here depicted and described, becomes a puppy, is born, and then, by still slower and less perceptible steps, passes into the adult Dog.
There is not much apparent resemblance between a barn- door Fowl and the Dog who protects the farm-yard. Never- theless the student of development finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg, primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the Dog, but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division—that the primitive groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned, by precisely similar methods, into a young chick, which, at one stage of its existence, is so like the nascent Dog, that ordinary inspection would hardly distinguish the two.
The history of the development of any other vertebrate animal, Lizard, Snake, Frog, or Fish, tells the same story. There’ is always, to begin with, an egg having the same essen- tial structure as that of the Dog :—the yelk of that egg always undergoes division, or ‘segmentation’ as it is often called: the ultimate products of that segmentation constitute the building
Se ee
lat apis B MELO LUI IKE
65
materials for the body of the young animal; and this is built up round a primitive groove, in the floor of which a notochord is developed. Furthermore, there is a period in which the young of all these animals resemble one another, not merely in outward form, but in all essentials of structure, so closely, that the differences between them are inconsiderable, while, in their subsequent course, they diverge more and more widely from one another. And it is a general law, that, the more closely any animals resemble one another in adult structure, the longer and the more intimately do their embryos resemble one another: so that, for example, the embryos of a Snake and of a Lizard remain like one another longer than do those of a Snake and of a Bird; and the embryo of a Dog and of a Cat remain like one another for a far longer period than do
those of a Dog and a Bird; or of a Dog and an Opossum;
or even than those of a Dog and a Monkey. —
Thus the study of development affords a clear test of close- ness of structural affinity, and one turns with impatience to inquire what results are yielded by the study of the develop- ment of Man. Is he something apart? Does he originate in a totally different way from Dog, Bird, Frog, and Fish, thus justifying those who assert him to have no place in nature and no real affinity with the lower world of animal life? Or does he originate in a similar germ, pass through the same slow and gradually progressive modifications,—depend on the same contrivances for protection and nutrition, and finally enter the world by the help of the same mechanism? The reply is not doubtful for a moment, and has not been doubtful any time these thirty years. Without question, the mode of origin and the early stages of the development of man are identical with those of the animals immediately: below him in the scale :—without a doubt, in these respects, he is far nearer the Apes, than the Apes are to the Dog.
The Human ovum is about ;4, of an inch in diameter, and ©
might be described in the same terms as that of the Dog, so that I need only refer to the figure illustrative (15 A.) of its F
‘ e
en
ECR:
ES a a
+3. eae A MOE cA Pe:
66
structure. It leaves the organ in which it is formed in a simi- lar fashion and enters the organic chamber prepared for its reception in the same way, the conditions of its development being in all respects the same. It has not yet been possible (and only by some rare chance can it ever be possible) to study the human ovum in so early a‘developmental stage as that of yelk division, but there is every reason to conclude that the changes it undergoes are identical with those ex- hibited by the ova of other vertebrated animals; for the formative materials of which the rudimentary human body is composed, in the earliest conditions in which it has been observed. are the same as those of other animals. Some of these earliest stages are figured below and,as will be seen, they are strictly comparable to the very early states of the Dog; the marvellous correspondence between the two which is kept up, even for some time, as development advances, becoming apparent by the simple comparison of the figures with those on page 63.
Fre. 15.—A. Human ovum (after Kolliker). a. germinal vesicle. 6. germinal spot. P aed B. A very early condition of Man, with yelk-sac, allantois and amnion (original). ©. A more advanced stage (after Kolliker), compare fig. 14, C.
Indeed, it is very long before the body of the young human being can be readily discriminated from that of the young
ie
———
ae
eee 67
puppy; but, at a tolerably early period, the two become dis- tinguishable by the different form of their adjuncts, the yelk- sac and the allantois. The former, in the Dog, becomes long and spindle-shaped, while in Man it remains spherical: the latter, in the Dog, attains an extremely large size, and the vascular processes which are developed from it and eventually give rise to the formation of the placenta (taking root, as it were, in the parental organism, so as to draw nourishment therefrom, as the root of a tree extracts it from the soil) are arranged in an encircling zone, while in Man, the allantois remains comparatively small, and its vascular rootlets are eventually restricted to one disk-like spot. Hence, while the placenta of the Dog is like a girdle, that of Man has the cake-like form, indicated by the name of the organ.
But, exactly in those respects in which the developing Man differs from the Dog, he resembles the ape, which, like man, has a spheroidal yelk-sac and a discoidal—sometimes par- tially lobed-placenta. |
So that it is only quite in the later stages of development ° that the young human being presents marked differences from the young .ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its development, as the man does. .
Startling as the last assertion may appear to be, it is de- monustrably true, and it alone appears to me sufficient to place beyond all doubt the structural unity of man with the rest of the animal world, and more particularly and closely with the apes.
Thus, identical in the physical processes by which he ori- nates—identical in the early stages of his formation—identical in the mode of his nutrition before and after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below him in the scale—Man, if his adult and perfect structure be compared with theirs, exhibits, as might he expected, a marvellous likeness of organization. He resembles them as they resemble one another—he differs from them as they differ from one
F2
ans lea iN LS late
68
another.—And, though these differences and resemblances cannot be weighed and measured, their value may be readily estimated ; the scale or standard of judgment, touching that value, being afforded and expressed by the system of classi- fication of animals now current among zoologists.
A careful study of the resemblances and differences pre- sented by animals has, in fact, led naturalists to arrange them into groups, or assemblages, all the members of each
group presenting a certain amount of definable resemblance, and the number of points of similarity being smaller as the group is larger and vicé versd. Thus, all creatures which agree only in presenting the few distinctive marks of ani- mality form the ‘Kingdom’ Antmatia. The numerous animals which agree only in possessing the special characters of Vertebrates form one ‘Sub-kingdom’ of this Kingdom. Then the Sub-kingdom Verrrsrara is subdivided into the five ‘Classes,’ Fishes, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals, and these into smaller groups called ‘Orders;’ these into ‘Families’ and ‘ Genera ;’ while the last are finally broken up into the smallest assemblages, which are distinguished by the possession of constant, not-sexual, characters. These ultimate groups are Species.
Every year tends to bring about a greater uniformity of opinion throughout the zoological world as to the limits and characters of these groups, great and small. At present, for example, no one has the least doubt regarding the characters of the classes Mammalia, Aves, or Reptilia; nor does the question arise whether any thoroughly well-known animal should be placed in one class or the other. Again, there is avery general agreement respecting the characters and limits of the orders of Mammals, and as to the animals which are structurally necessitated to take a place in one or another order.
No one doubts, for example, that the Sloth and the Ant- eater, the Kangaroo and the Opossum, the Tiger and the Badger, the Tapir and the Rhinoceros, are respectively mem-
69
bers of the same orders. These successive pairs of animals may, and some do, differ from one another immensely, in such matters as the proportions and structure of their limbs; the number of their dorsal and lumbar vertebre; the adap- tation of their frames to climbing, leaping, or running; the number and form of their teeth; and the characters of their skulls and of the contained brain. But, with all these dif- ferences, they are so closely connected in all the more im- portant and fundamental characters of their organization, and so distinctly separated by these same characters from other animals, that zoologists find it necessary to group them to- gether as members of one order. And if any new animal were discovered, and were found to present no greater dif- ference from the Kangaroo and the Opossum, for example, than these animals do from one another, the zoologist would not only be logically compelled to rank it in the same order with these, but he would not think of doing otherwise. Bearing this obvious course of zoological reasoning in mind, let us endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask of humanity; let us imagine ourselves scientific Saturnians, if you will, fairly acquainted
_ with such animals. as now inhabit the Earth, and employed in
discussing the relations they bear to a new and singular ‘ erect and featherless biped,’ which some enterprising traveller, overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from that distant planet for our inspection, well pre- served, may be, in acask of rum. We should all, at once, agree upon placing him among the mammalian vertebrates ; and his lower jaw, his molars, and his brain, would leave no room for doubting the systematic position of the new genus. among those mammals, whose young are nourished during gestation by means of a placenta, or what are called the ‘ placental mammals.’
Further, the most superficial study would at once convince us that, among the orders of placental mammals, neither the Whales nor the hoofed creatures, nor the Sloths and Ant-
TE ean A
76
eaters, nor the carnivorous Cats, Dogs, and Bears, still less the Rodent Rats and Rabbits, or the Insectivorous Moles and Hedgehogs, or the Bats, could claim our ‘Homo’ as one of themselves.
There would remain then, but one order for comparison, that of the Apes (using that word in its broadest sense), and the question for discussion would narrow itself to this—is Man so different from any of these Apes that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the same order with them ?
Being happily free from all real, or imaginary, personal in- terest in the results of the inquiry thus set afoot, we should proceed to weigh the arguments on one side and on the other, with as much judicial calmness as if the question re-
lated to a new Opossum. We should endeavour to ascertain, without seeking either to magnify or diminish them, all the characters by which our new Mammal differed from the Apes; and if we found that these were of less structural value, than those which distinguish certain members of the Ape order from others universally admitted to be of the same order, we should undoubtedly place the newly dis- covered tellurian genus with them.
I now proceed to detail the facts which seem to me to leave us no choice but to adopt the last mentioned course.
It is quite certain that the Ape which most nearly ap- proaches man, in the totality of its organization, is either the Chimpanzee or the Gorilla; and as it makes no prac- tical difference, for the purposes of my present argument, which is selected for comparison, on the one hand, with Man, and on the other hand, with the rest of the Primates,* I shall select the latter (so far as its organization is known) —
TSS
RTT
* We are not at present thoroughly acquainted with the brain of the Gorilla, and therefore, in discussing cerebral characters, I shall take that of the Chim- panzce as my highest term among the Apes. '
71
as a brute now so celebrated in prose and verse, that all must
have heard of him, and have formed some conception of his appearance, I shall take up as many of the most important points of difference between man and this remarkable crea- ture, as the space at my disposal will allow me to discuss, and the necessities of the argument demand; and I shall in- quire into the value and magnitude of these differences, when placed side by side with those which separate the Go-
‘villa from other animals of the same order.
In the general proportions of the body and limbs there is a remarkable difference between the Gorilla and Man, which at once strikes the eye. The Gorilla’s brain-case is smaller, its trunk larger, its lower limbs shorter, its upper limbs Annet in proportion than those of Man.
I find that the the vertebral column of a full grown Go- rilla, in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, mea- sures 27 inches along its anterior curvature, from the upper edge of the atlas, or first vertebra of the neck, to the lower extremity of the sacrum; that the arm, without the hand, is 314 inches long; that the leg, without the foot, is 264 inches long; that the hand is 92 inches long; the foot 114 inches long. . In other words, taking the length of the spinal column as 100, the arm equals 115, the leg 96, the hand 36, and the foot 41.
In the skeleton of a male Bosjesman, in the same collec-
tion, the proportions, by the same measurement, to the spinal
column, taken as 100, are—the arm 78, the leg 110, the hand 26, and the foot 32. In a woman of the same race the arm is 83, and the leg 120, the hand and foot remaining the same. In a European skeleton I find the arm to be 80, the leg 117, the hand 26, the foot 35.
Thus the leg is not so different as it looks at first sight, in its proportions to the spine in the Gorilla and in the Man— being very slightly shorter than the spime in the former, and between ;1; and + longer than the spine in the latter. The
foot is longer and the hand much longer in the Gorilla; but the great difference is caused by the arms, which are very much longer than the spine in the Gorilla, very much shorter than the spine in the Man.
The question now arises how are the other Apes related to the Gorilla in these respects—taking the length of the spine, measured in the same way, at 100. In an adult Chimpanzee, the arm is only 96, the leg 90, the hand 43, the foot 39 —so that the hand and the leg depart more from the human pro- portion and the arm less, while the foot is about the same as in the Gorilla.
In the Orang, the arms are very much longer than i in the Gorilla (122), while the legs are shorter (88) ; the foot is longer than the hand (52 and 48), and both are much longer in proportion to the spine.
In the other man-like Apes again, the Gibbons, these pro- portions are still further altered; the length of the arms being to that of the spinal column as 19 to 11; while the legs are
also a third longer than the spinal column, so as to be longer — than in Man, instead of shorter. The hand is half as long as the spinal column, and the foot, shorter than the hand, is about =, ths of the length of the spinal column.
Thus ee is as much longer in the arms than the Gorilla, as the Gorilla is longer in the arms than Man; while, on the other hand, it is as much longer in the legs than the Man, as the Man is longer in the legs than the Gorilla, so that it contains within itself the extremest deviations from the average length of both pairs of limbs (see the Frontispiece).
The Mandrill presents a middle condition, the arms and legs being nearly equal in length, and both being shorter than the spinal column ; while hand and foot have nearly the same proportions to one another and to the spine, as in Man.
In the Spider monkey (Afeles) the leg is longer than the spine, and the arm than the leg; and, finally, in that re- markable Lemurine form, the Indri, (Lichanotus) the leg is about -as long as the spinal column, while the arm is not
16)
more than 14 of its length; the hand having rather less and the foot rather more, than one third the length of the spinal column.
These examples might be greatly multiplied, but they suf- fice to show that, in whatever proportion of its limbs the Gorilla differs from Man, the other Apes depart still more widely from the Gorilla and that, consequently, such differ- ences of proportion can have no ordinal value. .
We may next consider the differences presented by the trunk, consisting of the vertebral column, or backbone, and the ribs and pelvis, or bony hip-basin, which are connected with it, in Man and in the Gorilla respectively.
In Man, in consequence partly of the disposition of the — articular surfaces of the vertebre, and largely of the elastic tension of some of the fibrous bands, or ligaments, which con- nect these vertebra together, the spinal column, as a whole, has an elegant S-like curvature, being convex forwards in the neck, concave in the back, convex in the loins, or lumbar region, and concave again in the sacral region ; an arrange- ment which gives much elasticity to the whole backbone, and diminishes the jar communicated to the spine, and through it to the head, by locomotion in the erect position.
Furthermore, under ordinary circumstances, Man has seven vertebre in his neck, which are called cervical; twelve succeed these, bearing ribs and forming the upper part of the back, whence they are termed dorsal ; five lie in the loins, bearing no distinct, or free, ribs, and are called lumbar ; five, united together into a great bone, excavated in front, solidly wedged in between the hip bones, to form the back of the pelvis, and. known by the name of the sacrum, succeed these ; and finally, three or four little more or less moveable bones, so small as to be insignificant, constitute the coccyx or rudimentary tail.
In the Gorilla, the vertebral column is similarly divided into cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral and coccygeal vertebrz, and the total number of cervical and dorsal vertebrae, taken to-
i 2a
my
gether, is the same as in man; but the development of a pair of ribs to the first lumbar vertebra, which is an exceptional occurrence in Man, is the rule in the Gorilla; and hence, as lumbar are distinguished from dorsal vertebree only by the presence or absence of free ribs, the seventeen “ dorso-
lumbar” vertebre of the Gorilla are divided into thirteen dorsal and four lumbar, while in Man they are twelve dorsal and five lumbar.
Not only, however, does Man occasionally possess thirteen pair of ribs,* but the Gorilla sometimes has fourteen pairs, while an Orang-Utan skeleton in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons has twelve dorsal and five lumbar verte- bre, asin Man. Cuvier notes the same number in a Hylo- bates. On the other hand, among the lower Apes, many possess twelve dorsal and six or seven lumbar vertebre; the Douroucouli has fourteen dorsal and eight lumbar, and a : Lemur (Stenops tardigradus) has fifteen dorsal and nine lumbar vertebre. -
The vertebral column of the Gorilla, as a whole, differs from that of Man in the less marked character of its curves, especially in the slighter convexity of the lumbar region. Nevertheless, the curves are present, and are quite obvious in young skeletons of the Gorilla and Chimpanzee which have been prepared without removal of the ligaments. In young Orangs similarly preserved, on the other hand, the spinal column is either straight, or even concave forwards, through-
out the lumbar region. Whether we take these characters then, or such minor
ones as those which are derivable from the proportional length of the spines of the cervical vertebre, and the like, there is
* ‘More than once,” says Peter Camper, “have I met with more than six lumbar vertebre inman. . . - Once I found thirteen ribs and four lumbar vertebra.” Fallopius noted thirteen pair of ribs and only four lumbar vertebre; and Eustachius once found eleven dorsal vertebre and six lumbar vertebree. —‘(CEuvres de Pierre Camper,’ T. 1, p.42. As Tyson states, his ‘ Pygmie’ had thirteen pair of ribs and five lumbar vertebra. The question of the curves of the spinal column in the Apes requires further investigation.
$9 son
,
75
no doubt whatsoever as to the marked difference between Man and the Gorilla; but there is as little, that equally marked differences, of the very same order, obtain between the Gorilla and the lower apes.
, : ALT Sen aft Th YC (i UA RANT Adan Hi i | t | iN ALN AN thi i NN (1A) ( {f etl NNN RM TTY UR BSN nh pag 4 i 4 aw Ny \ YN
Eee Cae = Saget
IN @ if Gorilla, “ONE
Giboon.
Fig. 16.—Front and side views of the bony pelvis of Man, the Gorilla and Gibbon: reduced from drawings made from nature, of the same absolute length, by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins,
a ee se ET orn
LOGE A te EE . =
—
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The Pelvis, or bony girdle of the hips, of Man is a strik- ingly human part of his organization ; the expanded haunch pones affording support for his viscera during his habitually erect posture, and giving space for the attachment of the great muscles which enable him to assume and to preserve that attitude. In these respects the pelvis of the Gorilla differs very considerably from his (Fig. 16). But go no lower than the Gibbon, and see how vastly more he differs from the Gorilla than the latter does from Man, even in this structure. Look at the flat, narrow haunch bones—the long and narrow passage—the coarse, outwardly curved, ischiatic prominences
on which the Gibbon habitually rests, and which are coated by the so-called “ callosities,” dense patches of skin, wholly absent in the Gorilla, in the Chimpanzee, and in the Orang,
asin Man! _
In the lower Monkeys and in the Lemurs the difference becomes more striking still, the pelvis acquiring an alto- gether quadrupedal character.
But now let us turn to a nobler and more characteristic organ—that by which the human frame seems to be, and indeed is, so strongly distinguished from all others, — I mean the skull. The differences between a Gorilla’s skull and a Man’s are truly immense (Fig. 17). In the former, the face, formed largely by the massive jaw-bones, predominates over the brain case, or cranium proper: in the latter, the propor- tions of the two are reversed. In the Man, the occipital
- foramen, through which passes the great nervous cord con-
necting the brain with the nerves of the body, is placed just behind the centre of the base of the skull, which thus be- comes evenly balanced in the erect posture; in the Gorilla, it lies in the posterior third of that base. In the Man, the surface of the skull is comparatively smooth, and the supra- ciliary ridges or brow prominences usually project but littl— while, in the Gorilla, vast crests are developed upon the skull, and the brow ridges overhang the cavernous orbits, like great penthouses.
—_—
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Sections of the skulls, however, show that some of the ap- parent defects of the Gorilla’s cranium arise, in fact, not so much from deficiency of brain case as from excessive deve-
lopment of the parts of the face. The cranial cavity is not ,
ill-shaped, and the forehead is not truly flattened or very re- treating, its really well-formed curve being simply disguised by the mass of bone which is built up against it (Fig. 17). But the roofs of the orbits rise more obliquely into the cranial cavity, thus diminishing the space for the lower part of the anterior lobes of the brain, and the absolute capacity of the cranium is far less than that of Man. So far as I am aware, no human cranium belonging to an adult man has yet been observed with a less cubical capacity than 62 cubic inches, the smallest cranium observed in any race.of men by Morton, measuring 63 cubic inches; while, on the other hand, the most capacious Gorilla skull yet measured has a content of not more than 34} cubic inches. Let us assume, for simplicity’s sake, that the lowest Man’s skull has twice
_ the capacity of that of the highest Gorilla, *
* It has been affirmed that Hindoo crania sometimes contain as little as 27 ounces of water, which would give a capacity of about 46 cubic inches. The minimum capacity which I have assumed above, however, is based upon the valuable tables published by Professor R. Wagner in his “ Vorstudien zu einer wissenschaftlichen Morphologie und Physiologie des menschlichen Gehirns.” As the result of the careful weighing of more than 900 human brains, Pro- fessor Wagner states that one-half weighed between 1200 and 1400 grammes, and that about two-ninths, consisting for the most part of male brains, exceed 1400 grammes. The lightest brain of an adult male, with sound mental facul- ties, recorded by Wagner, weighed 1020 grammes. As a gramme equals 15.4 grains, and a cubic inch of water contains 252.4 grains, this is equivalent to 62 cubic inches of water ; so that as brain is heavier than water, we are perfectly safe against erring on the side of diminution in taking this as the smallest capacity of any adult male human brain. The only adult male brain, weighing as little as 970 grammes, is that of an idiot ; but the brain of an adult woman, against the soundness of whose faculties nothing appears, weighed as little as 907 grammes (55.3 cubic inches of water); and Reid gives an adult female brain of still smaller capacity. The heaviest brain (1872 grammes, or about 115 cubic inches) was, however, that of a woman ; next to it comes the brain of Cuvier (1861 grammes), then Byron (1807 grammes), and then an insane
= — = ¢ as . = ar |? Leia aaiacasekeaiaseaaiaiaseia (2 i
78
No doubt, this is a very striking difference, but it loses much of its apparent systematic value, when viewed by the light of certain other equally indubitable facts respecting cranial capacities.
The first of these is, that the difference in the volume of the cranial cavity of different races of mankind is far greater, absolutely, than that between the lowest Man and the highest Ape, while, relatively, it is about the same. For the largest human skull measured by Morton, contained 114 cubic inches, that is to say, had very nearly double the capacity of the smallest; while its absolute preponderance, of 52 cubic inches—is far greater than that by which the lowest adult male human cranium surpasses the largest of the Gorillas (62 —341= 271). Secondly, the adult crania of Gorillas which have as yet been measured differ among themselves by nearly one-third, the maximum capacity being 34.5 cubic inches, the minimum 24 cubic inches; and, thirdly, after making all due allowance for difference of size, the cranial capacities of some of the lower apes fall nearly as much, relatively, below those of the higher Apes as the latter fall below Man.
Thus, even in the important matter of cranial capacity, Men differ more widely from one another than they do from the Apes; while the lowest Apes differ as much, in propor- tion, from the highest, as the latter does from Man. The last proposition is still better illustrated by the study of the modifications which other parts of the cranium undergo in the Simian series.
It is the large proportional size of the facial bones and the
great projection of the jaws which confers upon the Gorilla’s skull its small facial angle and brutal character. ;
person (1783 grammes). The lightest adult brain recorded (720 grammes) was that of an idiotic female. The brains of five children, four years old, weighed between 1275 and 992 grammes. So that it may be safely said, that an average European child of four years old has a brain twice as large as that of an adult Gorilla.
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But if we consider the proportional size of the facial bones to the skull proper only, the little Chrysothrix (Fig.17) differs
AUSTRALIAN.
CHRYSOTHRIX.
CYNOCEPHALUS,
Fig. 17.—Sections of the skulls of Man and various Apes, drawn so as to give the cerebral cavity the same length in each case, thereby displaying the varying
| |
Se TSE
patiiatneaandaatetiim anaes = = = SN nae aT = ee
nea —_ Rr
80
very widely from the Gorilla and, in the same way, as Man does; while the Baboons (Cynocephalus, Fig.17) exaggerate the gross proportions of the muzzle of the great Anthropoid, so that its visage looks mild and human by comparison with theirs. The difference between the Gorilla and the Baboon is even greater than it appears at first sight; for the great facial mass of the former is largely due to a downward de- velopment of the jaws; an essentially human character, super- added upon that almost purely forward, essentially brutal, development of the same parts which characterizes the Baboon, and yet more remarkably distinguishes the Lemur.
Similarly, the occipital foramen of Mycetes (Fig. 17); and still more of the Lemurs, is situated completely in the pos- terior face of the skull, or as much further back than that of the Gorilla, as that of the Gorilla is further back than that of Man; while, as if to render patent the futility of the attempt to base any broad classificatory distinction on such a character, the same group of Platyrhine, or American monkeys, to which the Mycetes belongs, contains the Chrysothriz, whose occipital foramen is situated far more forward than in any other ape, and nearly approaches the position it holds in Man.
Again, the Orang’s skull is as devoid of excessively de- veloped supraciliary prominences as a Man’s, though some varieties exhibit great crests elsewhere (see p. 41) ; and in some of the Cebine apes and in the Chrysothria, the cranium is as smooth and rounded as that of Man himself.
What is true of these leading characteristics of the skull, holds good, as may be imagined, of all minor features; so that for every constant difference between the Gorilla’s skull
proportions of the facial bones. ‘The line dD indicates the plane of the tentorium, which separates the cerebrum from the cerebellum ; d, the axis of the occipital outlet of the skull. The extent of cerebral cavity behind c, which is a perpen- dicular erected on } at the point where the tentorium is attached posteriorly, indicates the degree to which the cerebrum overlaps the cerebellum—the space occupied by which is roughly indicated by the dark shading. In comparing these diagrams, it must be recollected, that figures on so small a scale as these simply exemplify the statements in the text, the proof of which is to be found in the objects themselves,
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and the Man’s, a similar constant difference of the same
order (that is to say, consisting in excess or defect of the
same quality) may be found between the Gorilla’s skull and that of some other ape. So that, for the skull, no less than for the skeleton in general, the proposition holds good, that the differences between Man and the Gorilla are of smaller J value than those between the Gorilla and some other Apes:
In connection with the skull, I may speak of the teeth —organs which have a peculiar classificatory value, and whose resemblances and differences of number, form, and succession, taken as a whole, are usually regarded as more trustworthy indicators of affinity than any others.
Man is provided with two sets of teeth—milk teeth and permanent teeth. The former consist of four incisors, or cutting teeth ; two canines, or eye-teeth ; and four molars, or grinders, in each jaw, making twenty in all. The latter (Fig. 18) comprise four incisors, two canines, four small grinders, called premolars or false molars, and six large | grinders, or true molars in each jaw—making thirty-two in all. The internal incisors are larger than the external pair, in the upper jaw, smaller than the external pair, in the lower jaw. The crowns of the upper molars exhibit four cusps, or blunt-pointed elevations, and a ridge crosses the crown ob- liquely, from the inner, anterior, cusp to the outer, posterior cusp (Fig. 18 m*). The anterior lower molars have five cusps, three external and two internal. The premolars have two cusps, one internal and one external, of which the outer is the higher,
In all these respects the dentition of the Gorilla may be described in the same terms as that of Man ; but in other matters it exhibits many and important differences (Fig. 18),
Thus the teeth of man constitute a regular and even series—without any break and without any marked projec- tion of one tooth above the level of the rest 3 a peculiarity which, as Cuvier long ago showed, is shared by no other
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mammal save one—as different a creature from man as can _well be imagined—namely, the long extinct Anoplotherium. f The teeth of the Gorilla, on the contrary, exhibit a break, or interval, termed the diastema, in both jaws: in front of the _eye-tooth, or between it and the outer incisor, in the upper
Cheiromys.
“Fra. 18.—Lateral views, of the same length, of the upper jaws of various
Primates. 7, incisors; ¢, canines; ym, premolars; m,molars. A line is drawn _through the first molar of Man, Gorilla, Cynocephalus, and Cebus, and the ~ grinding surface of the second molar is shown in each, its anterior and internal “angle being just above the m of m?.
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jaw; behind the-eye-tooth, or between it and the front false molar, in the lower jaw. Into this break in the series, in each jaw, fits the canine of the opposite jaw; the size of the eye-tooth in the Gorilla being so great that it projects, like a tusk, far beyond the general level of the other teeth, The roots of the false molar teeth of the Gorilla, again, are more complex than in Man, and the proportional size of the molars is different. The Gorilla has the crown of the hindmost grinder of the lower jaw more complex, and the order of eruption of the permanent teeth is different; the permanent canines making their appearance before the second and third molars in Man, and after them in the Gorilla. .
Thus, while the teeth of the Gorilla closely resemble those of Man in number, kind, and in the general pattern of their crowns, they exhibit marked differences from those of Man in secondary respects, such as relative size, number of fangs, and order of appearance.
But, if the teeth of the Gorilla be compared with those
of an Ape, no further removed from it than a Cynocephalus,
or Baboon, it will be found that differences and resemblances of the same order are easily observable ; but that many of the points in which the Gorilla resembles Man are those in which it differs from the Baboon 3 while various respects in which it differs from Man are exaggerated in the Cynocephalus. The number and the nature of the teeth remain the same in the Baboon as in the Gorilla and in Man. But the pattern
of the Baboon’s upper molars is quite different from that
described above (Fig. 18), the canines are proportionally longer and more knife-like ; the anterior premolar in the lower jaw is specially modified; the posterior molar of the lower jaw is still larger and more complex than in the Gorilla.
Passing from the old-world Apes to those of the new world, we meet with a change of much greater importance than any of these. In such a genus as Cebus, for example (Fig. 18), it will be found that while in some secondary points, such as the projection of the canines and the diastema, the resemblance
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to the great ape is preserved ; in other and most important respects, the dentition is extremely different. Instead of 20 teeth in the milk set, there are 24: instead of 32 teeth in the permanent set, there are 36, the false molars being increased from eight to twelve. And in form, the crowns of the molars are very unlike those of the Gorilla, and differ far more widely from the human pattern.
The Marmosets, on the other hand, exhibit the same num- ber of teeth as Man and the Gorilla; but, notwithstanding this, their dentition is very different, for they have four more | false molars, like the other American monkeys — but as they have four fewer true molars, ‘the total remains the same. And passing from the American apes to the Lemurs, the dentition becomes still more completely and essentially different from that of the Gorilla. The incisors begin to vary both in number and in form. The molars acquire, more and more, a many-pointed, insectivorous character, and in one Genus, the Aye-Aye (Cheiromys), the canines disappear, and the teeth completely simulate those of a Rodent (Fig. 18).
Hence it is obvious that, greatly as the dentition of the highest Ape differs from that of Man, it differs far more widely from that of the lower and lowest Apes.
Whatever part of the animal fabric—whatever series of
muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison— the result would be the same—the lower Apes and the Gorilla would differ more than the Gorilla and the Man. I cannot attempt in this place to follow out all these comparisons in detail, and indeed it is unnecessary I should do so. But cer- tain real, or supposed, structural distinctions between man and the apes remain, upon which so much stress has been laid, that they require careful consideration, in order that the true value may be assigned to those which are real, and the emptiness of those which are fictitious may be exposed. I refer to the characters of the hand, the foot, and the brain. Man has been defined as the only animal possessed of two
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hands terminating his fore limbs, and of two feet ending his hind limbs, while it has been said that all the apes possess four hands ; and he has been affirmed to differ fundamentally from all the apes in the characters of his brain, which alone, it has been strangely asserted and re-asserted, exhibits the structures known to anatomists as the posterior lobe, the
_ posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus
minor. ‘ That the former proposition should have gained general acceptance is not surprising—indeed, at first sight, appear- ances are much in its favour: but, as for the second, one can only admire'the surpassing courage of its enunciator, seeing
that it is an innovation which is not only opposed to generally
and justly accepted doctrines, but which is directly negatived by the testimony of all original inquirers, who have specially investigated the matter: and that it neither has been, nor can be, supported by a single anatomical preparation. It
would, in fact, be unworthy of serious refutation, except for the general and natural belief that deliberate and reiterated
assertions must have some foundation.
Before we can discuss the first point with advantage we must consider with some attention, and compare together,
the structure of the human ‘hand and that of the human
foot, so that we may have distinct and clear ideas of what constitutes a hand and what a foot.
The external form of the human hand is familiar enough to every one. It consists of a stout wrist followed by a broad palm, formed of flesh, and tendons, and skin, binding together four bones, and dividing into four long and flexible digits, or fingers, each of which bears on the back of its last joint a broad and flattened nail, The longest cleft between any two digits is rather less than half as long as the hand. From the outer side of the base of the palm a stout digit goes off, having only two joints instead of three ; so short, that it only reaches to a little beyond the middle of the first joint of the finger next
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it; and further remarkable by its great mobility, m conse- quence of which it can be directed outwards, almost at a right angle to the rest. This digit is called the ‘ pollex, or thumb ; and, like the others, it bears a flat nail upon the back of its terminal joint. In consequence of the proportions and mobility of the thumb, it is what is termed “ opposable ;” i other words, its extremity can, with the greatest ease, be brought into contact with the extremities of any of the fingers ; a property upon which the possibility of our carrying into effect the conceptions of the mind so largely depends. “The external form of the foot differs widely from that of the hand; and yet, when closely compared, the two present sotne singular resemblances. Thus the ankle corresponds in a manner with the wrist; the sole with the palm; the toes with the fingers; the great toe with the thumb. But the toes, or digits of the foot, are far shorter in proportion than the digits of the hand, and are less moveable, the want of mobility being most striking in the great toe—which, again, is very much larger in proportion to the other toes than the thumb to the fingers. In considering this point, however, it must not be forgotten that the civilized great toe, confined. and cramped from childhood upwards, is seen to a great disad- vantage, and that in uncivilized and barefooted people it retains a great amount of mobility, and even some sort of opposability. The Chinese boatmen are said to be able to pullan oar; the artisans of Bengal to weave, and the Carajas to’ steal fishhooks by its help; though, after all, it must be recollected that the structure of its joints and the arrange- ment of its bones, necessarily render its prehensile action far less:perfect than that of the thumb. | But to gain a precise conception of the resemblances and differences of the hand and foot, and of the distinctive charac- ters of each, we must look below the skin, and compare the bony framework and its motor apparatus in each (Fig. 19). -The skeleton of the hand exhibits, in the region which we term the wrist, and which is technically called the carpus—
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two rows of closely fitted polygonal bones, four in each row, | which are tolerably equal in size. The bones of the first row |
with the bones of the forearm, form the wrist joint, and are arranged side by side, no one greatly exceeding or overlapping the rest.
The four bones of the second row of the carpus bear the four long bones which support the palm of the hand.. The
Hand.
Fig. 19.—The skeleton of the Hand and Foot of Man reduced from Dr. Carter’s drawings in Gray’s ‘ Anatomy.’ The hand is drawn to a larger scale than the foot. ‘The line aa in the hand indicates the boundary between the carpus and the metacarpus; bd that between the latter and the proximal phalanges; ¢¢ marks the ends of the distal phalanges. The line a’ a’ in the foot indicates the boundary between the tarsus and metatarsus; D' d’ marks that between the metatarsus and the proximal phalanges ; and c’c’ bounds the ends of the distal phalanges: ca, the calcaneum ; as, the astragalus ; sc, the scaphoid bone in the tarsus.
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fifth bone of the same character is articulated in a much more free and moveable manner than the others, with its carpal bone, and forms the base of the thumb. These are called metacarpal bones, and they carry the phalanges, or bones of the digits, of which there are two in the thumb, and three in each of the fingers. |
The skeleton of the foot is very like that of the hand in some respects. Thus there are three phalanges in each of the lesser toes, and only two in the great toe, which answers to the thumb. There is a long bone, termed metatarsal, answering to the metacarpal, for each digit; and the tarsus which corresponds with the carpus, presents four short poly- gonal bones in a row, which correspond very closely with the four carpal bones of the second row of the hand. In other respects the.foot differs very widely from the hand. Thus the great toe is the longest digit but one; and its metatarsal is far less moveably articulated with the tarsus, than the metacarpal of the thumb with the carpus. But a far more important distinction lies in the fact that, instead of four more tarsal bones there are only three; and that these three are not arranged side by side, or in one row. One of them, the
os calcis or heel bone (ca), lies externally, and sends back the large projecting heel; another, the astragalus (as), rests on this by one face, and by another, forms, with the bones of the
leg, the ankle joint; while a third face, directed forwards, is separated from the three inner tarsal bones of the row next the metatarsus by a bone called the scaphoid (sc).
Thus there is a fundamental difference in the structure of the foot and the hand, observable when the carpus and the tarsus are contrasted; and there are differences of degree noticeable when the proportions and the mobility of the metacarpals and metatarsals, with their respective digits, are compared together.
The same two classes of differences become obvious when the muscles of the hand are compared with those of the foot.
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Three principal sets of muscles, called “ flexors,” bend the
fingers and thumb, as in clenching the fist, and three sets, —the extensors—extend them, as in straightening the fingers. These muscles are all “long muscles;”’ that is to say, the fleshy part of each, lymg in and being fixed to the bones of the arm, is, at the other end, continued into tendons, or rounded cords, which pass into the hand, and are ultimately fixed to the bones which are to be moved. Thus, when the fingers are
bent, the fleshy parts of the flexors of the fingers, placed in |
the arm, contract, in virtue of their peculiar endowment as muscles ; and pulling the tendinous cords, connected with their ends, cause them to pull down the bones of the fingers towards the palm.
Not only are the principal flexors of the fingers and of the thumb long muscles, but they remain quite distinct from one another throughout their whole length.
In the foot, there are also three principal flexor muscles of the digits or toes, and three principal extensors ; but one ex- tensor and one flexor are short muscles; that is to say, their
fleshy parts are not situated in the leg (which corresponds
with the arm), but in the back and in the sole of the foot— regions which correspond with the back and the palm of the hand.
Again, the tendons of the long flexor of the toes, and of the long flexor of the great toe, when they reach the sole of the foot, do not remain distinct from one another, as the flexors in the palm of the hand do, but they become united and commingled in a very curious manner—while their united tendons receive an accessory muscle connected with the heel-bone.
But perhaps the most absolutely distinctive character about the muscles of the foot is the existence of what is termed the peroneus longus, a long muscle fixed to the outer bone of the leg, and sending its tendon to the outer ankle, behind and below which it passes, and then crosses the foot obliquely to be attached to the base of the great toe. No
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muscle in the hand exactly corresponds with this, which is eminently a foot muscle. . To resume—the foot of man is distinguished from his hand by the following absolute anatomical differences :— 1. By the arrangement of the tarsal bones. 2. By having a short flexor and a short extensor muscle of the digits. 3. By possessing the muscle termed peroneus longus. And if we desire to ascertain whether the terminal division of a limb, in other Primates, is to be called a foot or a hand, it is by the presence or absence of these characters that we must be guided, and not by the mere proportions and greater or lesser mobility of the great toe, which may vary indefi- nitely without any fundamental alteration in the structure of the foot.
Keeping these considerations in mind, let us now turn to the limbs of the Gorilla. The terminal division of the fore limb presents no difficulty—bone for bone and muscle for muscle, are found to be arranged essentially as in man, or with such minor differences as are found as varieties in man. The Gorilla’s hand is clumsier, heavier, and has a thumb some- what shorter in proportion than that of man; but no one has ever doubted its being a true hand.
At first sight, the termination of the hind limb of the Go- rilla looks very hand-like, and as it is still more so in many of the lower apes, it is not wonderful that the appellation *« Quadrumana,” or four-handed creatures, adopted from the older anatomists* by Blumenbach, and unfortunately rendered
* In speaking of the foot of his “ Pygmie,” Tyson remarks, p..13 :—
‘“‘ But this part in the formation and in its function too, being liker a Hand than a Foot: for the distinguishing this sort of animals from others, I have thought whether it might not be reckoned and called rather Quadru-manus than Quadrupes, é.e. a four-handed rather than a four-footed animal.”
As this passage was published in 1699, M. I. G. St. Hilaire is clearly in error in ascribing the invention of the term “ quadrumanous” to Buffon, though “bimanous” may belong to him. Tyson uses “Quadrumanus” in several
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current by Cuvier, should have gained such wide acceptance as a name for the Simian group. But the most cursory ana- tomical investigation at once proves that the resemblance of the so-called “hind hand” to a true hand, is only skin deep, and that, in all essential respects, the hind limb of the Gorilla is as truly terminated by a foot as that of man. The tarsal bones, in all important circumstances of number, disposition, and form, resemble those of man (Fig. 20). The metatarsals and digits, on the other hand, are proportionally longer and more slender, while the great toe is not only proportionally shorter and weaker, but its metatarsal bone is united by a more moveable joint with the tarsus. At the same time, the foot is set more obliquely upon the leg than in man.
As to the muscles, there is a short flexor, a short extensor, and a peroneus longus, while the tendons of the long flexors
of the great toe and of the other toes are united together
and with an accessory fleshy bundle. The hind limb of the Gorilla, therefore, ends in a true foot, with a very moveable great toe. It is a prehensile foot,
indeed, but is in no sense a hand: it is a foot which differs _
from that of man not in any fundamental character, but in mere proportions, in the degree of mobility, and in the secondary arrangement of its parts. :
It must not be supposed, however, because I speak of these differences as not fundamental, that I wish to underrate their value. They are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that of the.rest of the organism in each case. Nor can it be doubted that the greater division of physiological labour in Man, so that the function of support is thrown wholly on the leg and foot, is an advance in organization of very great moment to him; but, after all, regarded anatomically, the
places, asatp.91..... “ Our Pygmie is no Man, yor yet the common Ape, but a sort of Animal between both ; and though a Biped, yet of the Quadru- manus-kind : though some Men too have been observed to use their Feet like Hands, as I have seen several,”
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resemblances between the foot of Man and the foot of the Gorilla are far more striking and important than the differ- ences.
I have dwelt upon this pomt at length, because it is one regarding which much delusion prevails; but I might have passed it over without detriment to my argument, which only requires me to show that, be the differences between the hand and foot of Man and those of the Gorilla what they may—the differences between those of the Gorilla, and those of the lower Apes are much greater.
It is not necessary to descend lower in the scale than the Orang for conclusive evidence on this head.
The thumb of the Orang differs more from that of the Gorilla than the thumb of the Gorilla differs from that of Man, not only by its shortness, but by the absence cf any special long flexor muscle. The carpus of the Orang, like
SB
Gorilla ~~.
F1¢. 20.—Foot of Man, Gorilla, and Orang-Utan of the same absolute length, to show the differences in proportion of each. Letters as in Fig. 19. Reduced from original drawings by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins,
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that of most lower apes, contains nine bones, while in the Gorilla, as in Man and the Chimpanzee, there are only eight.
The Orang’s foot (Fig. 20) is still more aberrant; its very long toes and short tarsus, short great toe, short and raised heel, great obliquity of articulation in the leg, and absence of a long flexor tendon to the great toe, separating it far more widely from the foot of the Gorilla than the latter is separated from that of Man.
But, in some of the lower apes, the hand and foot diverge still more from those of the Gorilla, than they do in the Orang. The thumb ceases to be opposable in the American monkeys; is reduced to a mere rudiment covered by the skin in the Spider Monkey; and is directed forwards and
armed with a curved claw like the other digits, in the Mar- |
Astesaiacccisaa ena
mosets—so that, in all these cases, there can be no doubt |
-but that the hand is more different from that of the Gorilla
than the Gorilla’s hand is from Man’s. dec
And as to the foot, the great toe of the Marmoset is still more insignificant in proportion than that of the Orang— while in the Lemurs it is very large, and as completely thumb- like and opposable as in the Gorilla—but in these animals the second toe is often irregularly modified, and in some species the two principal bones of the tarsus, the astragalus and the os calcis, are so immensely elongated as to render the foot, so far, totally unlike that of any other mammal.
So with regard to the muscles. The short flexor of the toes of the Gorilla differs from that of Man by the circum: stance that one slip of the muscle is attached, not to the heel bone, but to the tendons of the long flexors. The lower Apes
depart from the Gorilla by an exaggeration of the same -
character, two, three, or more, slips becoming fixed to the long flexor tendons—or by a multiplication of the slips.— Again, the Gorilla differs slightly from Man in the mode of interlacing of the long flexor tendons: and the lower apes differ from the Gorilla in exhibiting yet other, sometimes very complex, arrangements of the same parts, and occa- sionally in the absence of the accessory fleshy bundle.
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Throughout all these modifications it must be recollected that the foot loses no one of its essential characters. Every Monkey and Lemur exhibits the characteristic arrangement of tarsal bones, possesses a short flexor and short extensor muscle, and a peroneus longus. Varied as the proportions and. appearance of the organ may be, the terminal division of the hind limb remains, in plan and principle of construction, a
foot, and never, in those respects, can be confounded with a hand.
Hardly any part of the bodily frame, then, could be found - better calculated to illustrate the truth that the structural »\ differences between Man and the highest Ape are of less value
| than those between the highest and the lower Apes, than the
‘hand or the foot, and yet, perhaps, there is one organ the
\ study of which enforces the same conclusion in a still more striking manner—and that is the Brain.
But before entering upon the precise question of the amount of difference between the Ape’s brain and that of Man, it is necessary that we should clearly understand what consti- tutes a great, and what a small difference in cerebral structure ; and we shall be best enabled to do this by a brief study of the chief modifications which the brain exhibits in the series of vertebrate animals.
The brain of a fish is very small, compared with the spinal cord into which it is continued, and with the nerves which come off from it: of the segments of which it is composed —the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemisphere, and the suc- ceeding divisions—no one predominates so much over the rest as to obscure or cover them ; and the so-called optic lobes are, . frequently, the largest masses of all. In Reptiles, the mass of the brain, relatively to the spinal cord, increases and the cere- bral hemispheres begin to predominate over the other parts ; while in Birds this predominance is still more marked. The brain of the lowest Mammals, such as the duck-billed Platypus _ and the Opossums and Kangaroos, exhibits a still more definite advance in the same direction. The cerebral hemi- spheres have now so much increased in size as, more or less,
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to hide the representatives of the optic lobes, which remain comparatively small, so that the brain of a Marsupial is ex- tremely different from that of a Bird, Reptile, or Fish. A step higher in the scale, among the placental Mammals, the structure of the brain acquires a vast modification—not that it appears much altered externally, in a Rat or in a Rabbit, from what it isin a Marsupial—nor that the proportions of its parts are much changed, but an apparently new structure is found between the cerebral hemispheres, connecting them together, as what is called the ‘ great commissure’ or ‘corpus
callosum.’ The subject requires careful re-investigation, but if .
the currently received statements are correct, the appearance of the ‘corpus callosum’ in the placental mammals is the greatest and most sudden modification exhibited by the brain in the whole series of vertebrated animals—it is the greatest
leap anywhere made by Nature in her brain work. For the ©
two halves of the brain being once thus knit together, the progress of cerebral complexity is traceable through a complete
series of steps from the lowest Rodent, or Insectivore, to Man;
and that complexity consists, chiefly, in the disproportionate development of the cerebral hemispheres and of the cerebel-
lum, but especially of the former, in respect to the other parts of the brain.
In the lower placental mammals, the cerebral hemispheres leave the proper upper and posterior face of the cerebellum completely visible, when the brain is viewed from above, but, in the higher forms, the hinder part of each hemisphere, sepa- rated only by the tentorium (p. 99) from the anterior face of the cerebellum, inclines backwards and downwards, and grows out, as the so-called “ posterior lobe,” so as at length to overlap and hide the cerebellum. In all Mammals, each cerebral hemisphere contains a cavity which is termed the ‘ventricle’ and as this ventricle is prolonged, on the one hand, forwards, and on the other downwards, into the sub- stance of the hemisphere, it is said to have two horns or ‘cornua,’ an ‘anterior cornu,’ and a ‘descending cornu.’ When the posterior lobe is well developed, a third prolonga-
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tion of the ventricular cavity extends into it, and is called the posterior cornu.”
In the lower and smaller forms of placental Mammals the surface of the cerebral hemispheres is either smooth or evenly rounded, or exhibits a very few grooves, which are technically termed ‘ sulci,’ separating ridges or ‘ convolutions’ of the sub- stance of the brain ; and the smaller species of all orders tend to a similar smoothness of brain. But, in the higher orders, and especially the larger members of these orders, the grooves, or sulci, become extremely numerous, and the intermediate convolutions proportionately more complicated in their mean- derings, until, in the Elephant, the Porpoise, the higher Apes, and Man, the cerebral surface appears a perfect labyrinth of tortuous foldings.
Where a posterior lobe exists and presents its customary cavity—the posterior cornu—it commonly happens that a particular sulcus appears upon the inner and under surface of the lobe, parallel with and beneath the floor of the cornu— which is, as it were, arched over the roof of the sulcus. It is as if the groove had been formed by indenting the floor of the posterior horn from without with a blunt instrument, so
that the floor should rise as a convex eminence. Now this eminence is what has been termed the ‘ Hippocampus minor ;” the ‘Hippocampus major’ being a larger eminence in the floor of the descending cornu. What may be the functional importance of either of these structures we know not.
As if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the impossi- bility of erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes, Nature has provided us, in the latter animals, with an almost complete series of gradations from brains little higher than that of a Rodent, to brains little lower than that of Man. And it is a remarkable circumstance, that though, so far as our present knowledge extends, there is one true structural break in the series of forms of Simian brains, this hiatus does not lie between Man and the man-like apes, but between the lower and the lowest Simians ; or, in other words, between
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the old and new world apes and monkeys, and the Lemurs, Every Lemur which has yet been examined, in fact, has its cerebellum partially visible from above, and its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior cornu and hippocampus minor, more or less rudimentary. Every Marmoset, American monkey, old world monkey, Baboon, or Man-like ape, on the contrary, has its cerebellum entirely hidden, posteriorly, by the cerebral lobes, and possesses a large posterior cornu, with a well developed hippocampus minor.
In many of these creatures, such as the Saimiri (Chrysothria), the cerebral lobes overlap and extend much further behind the cerebellum, in proportion, than they do in man (Fig. 17)— and itis quite certain that, in all, the cerebellum is completely covered behind, by well developed posterior lobes. The fact can be verified by every one who possesses the skull of any old or new world monkey. For, inasmuch as the brain in all mam- mals completely fills the cranial cavity, it is obvious that a cast
of the interior of the skull will reproduce the general form of
the brain, at any rate with such minute and, for the present purpose, utterly unimportant differences as may result from the absence of the enveloping membranes of the brain in the dry skull. But if such a cast be made in plaster, and com- pared with a similar cast of the interior of a human skull, it will be obvious that the cast of the cerebral chamber, re« presenting the cerebrum of the ape, as completely covers over and overlaps the cast of the cerebellar chamber, representing the cerebellum, as it does in the man (Fig. 21). A careless observer, forgetting that a soft structure like the brain loses its proper shape the moment it is taken out of the skull, may indeed mistake the uncovered condition of the cere- bellum of an extracted and distorted brain for the xiatural relations of the parts; but his error must become patent even to himself if he try to replace the brain within the cranial chamber. To suppose that the cerebellum of an ape is naturally uncovered behind is a miscomprehension com- parable only to that of one who should imagine that a man’s
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lungs always occupy but a small portion of the thoracic cavity —because they do so when the chest is opened, and their elasticity is no longer neutralized by the pressure of the air.
Chimpanzee.
Fig. 21.—Drawings of the internal casts of a Man’s and of a Chimpanzee’s skull, of the same absolute length, and placed in corresponding positions, A. Cerebrum; B. Cerebellum, The former drawing is taken from a cast in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, the latter from the photograph of the cast’ of a Chimpanzee’s skull, which illustrates the paper by Mr. Marshall ‘ Onthe Brain of the Chimpanzee’ in the Natural History Review for July, 1861. The sharper definition of the lower edge of the cast of the cerebral chamber in the Chimpanzee arises from the circumstance that the tentorium remained in that skull and not in the Man’s. ‘The cast more accurately represents the brain in Chimpanzee than in the Man; and the great backward projection of the pos- terior lobes of the cerebrum of the former, beyond the cerebellum, is conspicuous:
vo
And the error is the less excusable, as it must become apparent to every one who examines a section of the skull of any ape above a Lemur, without taking the trouble to make a cast of it. For there is a very marked groove in every such skull, as in the human skull—which indicates the line of attachment of what is termed the tentoriwm—a sort of parchment-like shelf, or partition, which, in the recent state, is interposed between the cerebrum and cerebellum, and prevents the former from pressing upon the latter, (see Fig. 17). :
This groove, therefore, indicates the line of separation between that part of the cranial cavity which contains the cerebrum, and that which contains the cerebellum; and as the brain exactly fills the cavity of the skull, it is obvious that the relations of these two parts of the cranial cavity at. once informs us of the relations of their contents. Now in man, in all the old world, and in all the new world Simie, with one exception, when the face is directed forwards, this line of attachment of the tentorium, or impression for the lateral sinus, as it is technically called, is nearly horizontal, and the cerebral chamber invariably overlaps or projects behind the cerebellar chamber. In the Howler Monkey or Mycetes (see Fig. 17), the line passes obliquely upwards and backwards, and the cerebral overlap is almost nil; while in the Lemurs, as in the lower mammals, the line is much more inclined in the same direction, and the cerebellar chamber projects considerably beyond the cerebral.
When the gravest errors respecting points so easily settled as this question respecting the posterior lobes, can be authorita- tively propounded, it is no wonder that matters of observation, of no very complex character, but still requiring a certain amount of care, should have fared worse. Any one who cannot see the posterior lobe in an ape’s brain is not likely to give a very valuable opinion respecting the posterior cornu or the hippocampus minor. If a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or
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painted window—so that I do not feel bound to enter upon any discussion of these points, but content myself with assur- ing the reader that the posterior cornu and the hippocampus minor, have now been seen—usually, at least as well developed as in man, and often better—not only in the Chimpanzee, the Orang, and the Gibbon, but in all the genera of the old world baboons and monkeys, and in most of the new world forms, including the Marmosets.*
In fact, all the abundant and trustworthy evidence (con- sisting of the results of careful investigations directed to the determination of these very questions, by skilled anatomists) which we now possess, leads to the conviction that, so far from the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippo- campus minor, being structures peculiar to and characteristic of man, as they have been over and over again asserted to be, even after the publication of the clearest demonstration of the reverse, it is precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes. They are among the most distinctly Simian pecu- liarities which the human organism exhibits.
As to the convolutions, the brains of the apes exhibit every stage of progress, from the almost smooth brain of the Marmoset, to the Orang and the Chimpanzee, which fall but. little below Man. And it is most remarkable that, as soon as all the principal sulci appear, the pattern according to which they are arranged is identical with that of the corresponding sulci of man. The surface of the brain of a monkey exhibits
a sort of skeleton map of man’s, and in the man-like apes the details become more and more filled in, until it is only in minor characters, such as the greater excavation of the ante- rior lobes, the constant presence of fissures usually absent in man, and the different disposition and proportions of some eonvolutions, that the Chimpanzee’s or the Orang’s brain can be structurally distinguished from Man’s.
* See the note at the end of this essay for a succinct history of the controversy to which allusion is here made.
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ay vy 4 \
i We ATT UE ta \ \\" mas '
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Chimpanzee.
Fic. 22.—Drawings of the cerebral hemispheres of a Man and of a Chim- panzee of the same length, in order to show the relative proportions of the parts: the former taken from a specimen, which Mr. Flower, Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, was good enough to dissect for me ; the latter, from the photograph of a similarly dissected Chimpanzee’s brain, given in Mr. Marshall’s paper above referred to. a, posterior lobe; 0, lateral ventricle; ¢, posterior cornu; 2%, the hippocampus minor.
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So far as cerebral structure goes, therefore, it is clear that Man differs less from the Chimpanzee or the Orang, than these do even from the Monkeys, and that the difference
between the brains of the Chimpanzee and of Man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the Chim-
panzee brain and that of a Lemur.
It must not be overlooked, however, that there is a very striking difference in absolute mass and weight between the lowest human brain and that of the highest ape —a difference which is all the more remarkable when we recollect that a full grown Gorilla is probably pretty nearly twice as heavy_as a Bosjes man, or as many an European woman. It may be doubted whether a healthy human adult brain ever weighed less than thirty-one or -two ounces, or that the heaviest Gorilla brain has exceeded twenty ounces. =:
This is a very noteworthy circumstance, and doubtless will one day help to furnish an explanation of the great gulf which intervenes between the lowest man and the highest ape in intellectual power ;* but it has little systematic value, for the _
* Tsay help to furnish: for I by no means believe that it was any original difference of cerebral quality, or quantity, which caused that divergence between the human and the pithecoid stirpes, which has ended in the present enormous gulf between them. It is no doubt perfectly true, in a certain sense, that all difference of function is a result of difference of structure; or, in other words, of difference in the combination of the primary molecular forces of living sub- stance ; and, starting from this undeniable axiom, objectors occasionally, and with much seeming plausibility, argue that the vast intellectual chasm between the Ape and Man implies a corresponding structural chasm in the organs of the intellectual functions ; so that, it is said, the non-discovery of such vast differ- ences proves, not that they are absent, but that Science is incompetent to detect them. A very little consideration, however, will, I think, show the fallacy of this reasoning. Its validity hangs upon the assumption, that intéllectual power depends altogether on the brain—whereas the brain is only one condition out of many on which intellectual manifestations depend ; the others being, chiefly, the organs of the senses and the motor apparatuses, especially those which are concerned in prehension and in the production of articulate speech.
A man born dumb, notwithstanding his great cerebral mass and his inheritance of strong intellectual instincts, would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than an Orang or a Chimpanzee, if he were confined to the society
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simple reason. that, as may be concluded from what has
been already said respecting cranial capacity, the difference
in weight of brain between the highest and the lowest men is far greater, both relatively and absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape. The latter, as has been seen, is represented by, say twelve, ounces of cerebral sub- stance absolutely, or by 32: 20 relatively ; but as the largest recorded human brain weighed between 65 and 66 ounces, the former difference is represented by more than 33 ounces absolutely, or by 65: 32 relatively. Regarded systematically the cerebral differences, of man and apes, are not of more than generic value—his Family distinction resting chiefly on his dentition, his pelvis, and his lower limbs.
Thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result—that the structural differences which separate
Man from the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee are not so great. a
as those which separate the Gorilla from the lower apes.
of dumb associates. And yet there might not be the slightest discernible dif- ference between his brain and that of a highly intelligent and cultivated person. The dumbness might be the result of a defective structure of the mouth, or of the tongue, or amere defective innervation of these parts; or it might result from congenital deafness, caused by some minute defect of the internal ear, which only a careful anatomist could discover.
The argument, that because there is an immense difference between a Man's intelligence and an Ape’s, therefore, there must be an equally immense difference between their brains, appears to me to be about as well based as the reasoning by which one should endeavour to prove that, because there is a “ great gulf” between a watch that keeps accurate time and another that will not go at all, there is therefore a great structural hiatus between the two watches, A hair in the balance-wheel, a little rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the escapement,
a something so slight that only the practised eye of the watchmaker can discover
it, may be the source of all the difference.
And believing, as I do, with Cuvier, that the possession of articulate speech is the grand distinctive character of man (whether it be absolutely peculiar to him or not), I find it very easy to comprehend, that some equally inconspicuous struc- tural difference may have been the primary cause of the immeasurable and prac- tically infinite divergence of the Human from the Simian Stirps.
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