10 Professor Owen, [Feb. 4, 



the ratio of decrement in the density of the atmosphere. *rhus by our 

 cabinet experiments, light may be thrown on the grand phenomena of 

 the universe, and tlie great questions of the divisibility of matter, 

 whether there is a limit to its expansibility, whether there is a fourth 

 state of attenuation beyond the recognised states of solid, liquid, and 

 gaseous, as Newton seemed to suspect, (30th query to the Optics,) and 

 whether the imponderables are specific affections of matter in a peculiar 

 state, or of highly attenuated gaseous matter, may be elucidated. 

 The manageable character of the electrical discharge, and the various 

 phenomena it exhibits when matter is subjected to its influence in 

 all those varied states which we are enabled, by experiment, to reduce 

 it, can hardly fail to afford new and valuable information on these 

 abstruse and most interesting enquiries. 



[W. R. G.] 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 4, 1859. 



Sir R. I. MuRCHisoN, D.C.L. F.R.S. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Professor Owen, F.R.S. &c. 



FULLERIAN PKOFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, KOYAL INSTITUTION. 



On the Gorilla, 



The lecturer referred to the discourse "On the Anthropoid Apes and 

 their relations to Man," delivered by him in 1855, in which so much 

 as was at that time known respecting the extraordinary and then 

 recently-discovered species of ape, the subject of the present lecture, 

 had been detailed, with inferences drawn from the osteology and 

 dentition of the gorilla, in regard to the hypothetical origin of man by 

 transmutation and development of the ape. The additional facts, sub- 

 sequently ascertained respecting the gorilla, although they prove its 

 nearer approach to man than any other tailless ape, have not in any 

 degree affected or invalidated the conclusions at which the lecturer 

 had arrived in his previous discourse. 



Since the date of that discourse, skeletons and the entire carcase 

 preserved in spirits of the gorilla had successively reached the Museums 

 of Paris, Vienna, and London ; and had formed the subjects of several 

 memoirs, the results of the recorded observations differing only in 

 regard to the interpretation of the facts. 



Dr. Wyraan, the accomplished anatomical professor at Boston, 

 U.S., agreed with Professor Owen, in referring the gorilla to the 



