GEOLOGY. 237 



Sheep and goats "have brains not distinguishable ; yet the goat is a 

 very clever animal, and the sheep a very stupid one. In the dentition 

 of man and the apes there is certainly a singular accord. The diges- 

 tive organs also agree. Yet with this similarity, man is an omnivorous, 

 and the monkey a frugivorous animal, seemingly resorting to worms 

 and insects only from necessity. The teeth of the monkeys are more 

 powerful, proportionally, than those of man, to enable them to crush 

 the hard -rinded fruits on which they mainly subsist, as well as to serve 

 as weapons of defence, for they have no other. Prof. Huxley has very 

 satisfactorily shown that the designation of " quadrumane," or four- 

 handed, is incorrectly applied to the family of monkeys. Their feet are 

 real feet, although prehensile ones ; but the upper limbs are true 

 hands, and it is in the possession of these, far more than in a similarity 

 of brain, that the ape approaches the nearest to man. Notwithstand- 

 ing his seemingly dexterous hands, the monkey can neither fashion nor 

 use an implement or weapon. It is his brain, anatomically so like that 

 of a man, but psychologically so unlike, that hinders him from per- 

 forming this seemingly simple achievement. All the different races of 

 man intermix to the production of fertile offspring. No intercourse at 

 all takes place between the different species of monkeys. Man, of one 

 variety or another, exists and multiplies in every climate. The 

 monkeys are chiefly found within the tropics, and seldom above a few 

 degrees beyond them. The natural abode of man is the level earth ; 

 that of the monkeys, the forest. Man came into the world naked and 

 houseless, and had to provide himself with clothing and dwelling by 

 the exercise of superior brain and hands. The monkeys are furnished 

 by nature with a clothing like the rest of the lower animals, and their 

 dwellings are not superior to those of the wild boar. Man has the fac- 

 ulty of storing knowledge for his own use and that of all future gener- 

 ations ; in this respect, every generation of monkeys resembles that 

 which has preceded it, and so, no doubt, has it been from the first cre- 

 ation of the family. The special prerogative of man is language, and 

 no race of men, however meanly endowed, has ever been found that 

 had not the capacity of framing one. In this matter, the monkey is 

 hardly on a level with the parrot or the magpie. But is it true that 

 the anthropoid apes come nearest to man in intelligence ? They ought 

 to do so, if they be the nearest grade to man in the progress of trans- 

 mutation by natural selection. Prof. Huxley has fully and faithfuUy 

 described four of these anthropoids ; and it appears to me that, among 

 them, those which anatomically approach the nearest to man are the 

 least like to him in intelligence. At the top of the list is the gorilla ; 

 and all we know about him is, that he is ferocious and untamable. 

 The orang-utan, or mias, seems to me to be the nearest in form to man ; 

 but he is described as a slow, sluggish, dull, and melancholy animal. 

 The other two species, the gibbon and chimpanzee, seem to me incom- 

 parably more lively, playful, and intelligent than the more anthropoid. 

 If, adopting the theory of the transmutation of species by natural se- 

 lection, we believe the gorilla to be the next step to man in the prog- 

 ress of change, it must be taken for granted that the transmutation 

 must have proceeded from the lower to the higher monkeys. Exclu- 

 sive of the lemurs, there are some two hundred distinct species. 

 Which species is at the bottom of the long scale implied by this num- 



