26 Professor Otvcfi on the [Feb. 9, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 9. 



William Pole, Esq. M,A. F.R.S. Treasurer and Vice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



Professor Owen, F.R.S. 

 On tJie Anthropoid Apes, and their relatiotis to Man, 



In this discourse, the structure, more especially of the bones and teeth, 

 of the most highly organised Apes — the Orang-utans and Chim- 

 panzees — was compared with that of the Human Subject, in 

 reference to the hypothesis that specific characters can be so far 

 modified by external influences, operating on successive generations, 

 as to produce a new and higher species of animal, and that thus 

 there had been a gradual progression from the monad up to man. 



The conditions under which an active monad might be developed 

 from dead mucus, or other organic matter in an infusion, or those 

 that might influence and attend the transmutation of one recognised 

 species into another — say of a polype into a medusa — were legiti- 

 mate and important subjects of physiological research. But, 

 hitherto, the results of such researches had not favoured the hypo- 

 thesis of the coming in of species by spontaneous generation and 

 transmutation. 



The last link in the chain of changes — from Quadrumana to 

 JBimana — according to the latter old notion, the speaker had found 

 alluded to by Henry More in his philosophical " Conjectura Cab- 

 balistica;" and in reference to that, and other works of the same 

 period, in which creative forces and the nature and origin of animal 

 species were treated of, the equal spirit, vigorous intellect, profound 

 learning, and laborious research of such men as Cudworth, More, 

 and Grew, contrasted most favourably with the opposite character- 

 istics of some works of the same kind of the present day. 



True it was that the old authors referred to exemplified the pre- 

 valent belief of their age in witches and apparitions. But has not 

 our age its clairvoyants and spirit-rappers ? Two centuries ago it 

 was believed that a long round piece of wood, if bestridden by a 

 person properly " possessed," would, under such influence, move 

 against gravity, rise from the ground, and transport itself and its 

 rider through the air. In our time it has been and may be still 

 believed, that a flat circular piece of wood, on legs, can be made. 



