18591863] MAN 237 



placed in distinct Sub-Classes, Owen speaks (in the foot-note of which 

 Huxley made such telling effect) of the determination of the difference 

 between Homo and Pithecus as the anatomist's difficulty. (See Letter 1 19.) 



July 5th, 1857. 



What a capital number of the Linnean Journal] Owen's is Letter 163 

 a grand paper ; but I cannot swallow Man making a division 

 as distinct from a chimpanzee as an OrnitJiorhynchus from a 

 horse ; I wonder what a chimpanzee would say to this ? x 



To T. H. Huxley. Letter 164 



Down [Feb. ?] 26th, 1863. 



I have just finished with very great interest " Man's 

 Place." I never fail to admire the clearness and condensed 

 vigour of your style, as one calls it, but really of your thought. 

 I have no criticisms ; nor is it likely that I could have. But 

 I think you could have added some interesting matter on the 

 character or disposition of the young ourangs which have 

 been kept in France and England. I should have thought 

 you might have enlarged a little on the later embryological 

 changes in man and on his rudimentary structure, tail as 

 compared with tail of higher monkeys, intermaxillary bone, 

 false ribs, and I daresay other points, such as muscles of ears, 

 etc., etc. I was very much struck with admiration at the 

 opening pages of Part II. (and oh ! what a delicious sneer, 

 as good as a dessert, at p. io6): 3 but my admiration is 

 unbounded at pp. 109 to 112. I declare I never in my life 

 read anything grander. Bacon himself could not have 



1 According to Owen the sub-class Archencephala contains only the 

 genus Homo : the Gyrencephala contains both chimpanzee and horse, 

 the Lyencephala contains OrnitJiorhynchus. 



2 Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, 1863 (preface dated January 

 1863). 



3 Huxley, op. tit., p. 106. After saying that " there is but one 

 hypothesis regarding the origin of species of animals in general which 

 has any scientific existence that propounded by Mr. Darwin," and 

 after a few words on Lamarck, he goes on : " And though I have heard 

 of the announcement of a formula touching ' the ordained continuous 

 becoming of organic forms,' it is obvious that it is the first duty of a 

 hypothesis to be intelligible, and that a qua-qua-versal proposition of this 

 kind, which may be read backwards or forwards, or sideways, with 

 exactly the same amount of significance, does not really exist, though it 

 may seem to do so." The " formula " in question is Owen's. 



