34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



held to surpass them in the exquisite perfection of their physical struct- 

 ure, while the flexible trunk of the elephant, combined with his vast 

 strength and admirable sagacity, would probably gain for him the first 

 rank in the animal creation. 



But if this would have been a true estimate, the mere fact that the 

 ape is our nearest relation does not necessarily oblige us to come to any 

 other conclusion. Man is undoubtedly the most perfect of all animals, 

 but he is so solely in respect of characters in which he differs from all 

 the monkey-tribe the easily erect posture, the perfect freedom of the 

 hands from all part in locomotion, the large size and complete opposa- 

 bility of the thumb, and the well-developed brain, which enables him 

 fully to utilize these combined physical advantages. The monkeys 

 have none of these, and without them the amount of resemblance they 

 have to us is no advantage, and confers no rank. We are biased by 

 the too exclusive consideration of the man-like apes. If these did not 

 exist, the remaining monkeys could not be thereby deteriorated as to 

 their organization or lowered in their zoological position ; but it is 

 doubtful if we should then class them so high as we now do. We 

 might then dwell more on their resemblances to lower types to ro- 

 dents, to insectivora, and to marsupials, and should hardly rank the 

 hideous baboon above the graceful leopard or stately stag. The true 

 conclusion appears to be, that the combination of external characters 

 and internal structure which exists in the monkeys is that which, when 

 greatly improved, refined, and beautified, was best calculated to become 

 the perfect instrument of the human intellect, and to aid in the devel- 

 opment of man's higher nature ; while, on the other hand, in the rude, 

 inharmonious, and undeveloped state which it has reached in the quad- 

 rumana, it is by no means worthy of the highest place, or can be held 

 to exhibit the most perfect development of existing animal life. Con- 

 temporary Review. 







THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 



By EOBEET W. LOVETT. 



IN the fifth century before Christ, Democritus declared that the 

 senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste were merely modifications 

 of the sense of touch. Aristotle ridiculed his theory, and so, stamped 

 with his disapproval, it lay untouched for two thousand years, until 

 Telesius, an Italian of the sixteenth century, revived it. 



Strange to say, all that modern science has accomplished in embry- 

 ology and zoology tends to confirm this theory of Democritus, that 

 these four senses are only specializations of the universal sense the 

 sense of touch. In the embryo of all animals the organs of these four 

 senses first appear as infoldings of the outer germinal layer, the ecto- 



