DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN. 



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cognizance of by the Zoologist, it is only with his structural characters that 

 the Zoologist should concern himself. In this point of view it appears to 

 the author clearly demonstrable that the structural distinctions by which 

 Man is separated from the higher Apes are much smaller in amount than 

 those by which the latter are separated from the lower Quadrumana ; and 

 hence that the Liunrean association of Man and the Quadrumana in the 

 same primary group is much more correct than the ordinal separation of the 

 Simana and (Jtiadmmana maintained by Cuvier, and a fortiori than the prop- 

 osition of Prof. Owen to rank Man in a distinct sub-class. 



23. As the ordinal separation of the Bimuna from the Quadrumana has 

 come to be generally accepted upon the authority of Cuvier, it will be desira- 

 ble to begin by examining into the validity of the characters on which it 

 rests ; comparing, in the first place, the hand and the foot of Man with the 

 corresponding extremities of the higher Apes; and then inquiring whether 

 the differences which they respectively present, either surpass in degree those 

 with which we meet in a like comparison between the extremities of the 

 higher Apes and those of the lower Monkeys, or can be justly held to depart 

 from them in kind. There is in Man, what we observe in none of the Mam- 

 malia which approach him in other respects, a complete distinction in the 

 character of the anterior and posterior extremities ; the former being adapted 

 for prehension alone, and the latter almost exclusively for support and pro- 

 gression : and thus each function is performed with much greater complete- 

 ness, than it can be when two such opposite purposes have to be united. 

 " That," says Cuvier, " which constitutes the hand, properly so called, is the 

 faculty of opposing the thumb to the other fingers, so as to seize upon the 

 most minute objects; a faculty which is carried to its highest degree of per- 

 fection in Man, in whom the whole anterior extremity is free, and can be 

 employed in prehension." The peculiar prehensile power possessed by the 

 Hand of Man, is chiefly dependent upon the size and power of the thumb ; 

 which is more developed in him, than it is in the highest Apes (Fig. 1). The 



FIG. 1. 



Hand of Man, compared with anterior extremity of Orang. 



thumb of the Human hand can be brought into exact opposition to the ex- 

 tremities of all the fingers, whether singly or in combination ; while in those 

 Quadrumana which most nearly approach man, the thumb is so short, and 

 the fingers so much elongated, that their tips can scarcely be brought into 

 opposition ; and the thumb and fingers are so weak, that they can never be 



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