48 DESULTORY SKETCHES IN NATURAL HISTORY. 



exclusively ground habits, a perfectly erect attitude, and the other 

 attributes of humanity, wherein the different form and great deve- 

 lopment of his lower limbs may be resolved, together with other 

 analogous variations. Even his amazingly developed brain is 

 merely a difference in degree, a further carrying out of the same 

 relative disparity which is observable in the brain of the Dog as 

 compared with that of the Rabbit ; not a difference of organic struc- 

 ture, acquired by the superaddition of component parts, such as is 

 exemplified in the brains of all the Placental Mammalia, as com- 

 pared with those of the rest of the Vertebrata. According to M. 

 Geoffroy, " the brain of a young Ourang bears a very close simili- 

 tude to that of a child ; and the skull, also, might be taken, at an 

 early age, for that of the latter, were it not for the development of 

 the bones of the face. But it happens," continues that profound 

 anatomist, "in consequence of its advance in age, that the brain 

 ceases to enlarge, while its case continually increases. The latter 

 becomes thickened, but in an unequal degree ; enormous bony ridges 

 appear, and the animal assumes a frightful aspect. When we com- 

 pare the effects of age in Man and the Ourang, the difference is seen 

 to be, that, in the latter, there is a superdevelopment of the osseous, 

 muscular, and tegumentary systems, more towards the upper part 

 than the lower, while the development of the brain is earlier ar- 

 rested." The vis formativa simply takes a different direction, in 

 order to develope the mechanism required to employ effectively the 

 huge permanent canines ; whence the organ and function of intelli- 

 gence remain stationary at their transient condition in the child, 

 but modified, of course, by the completion and agency of the incen- 

 tives incidental to maturity. 



To pursue this subject further, on the present occasion, would 

 be irrelevant ; but we may nevertheless venture to remark, that, 

 consistently with the nature of those differences of physical confor- 

 mation which the bodily frame of Man offers when compared with 

 those of the restricted Apes (and indeed the rest of the Quadru- 

 mana, Cuv.), we can perceive no sufficient reason for distinguishing 

 him as a separate order — Bimana, as opposed to Quadrumana ; in- 

 asmuch as — however considerable may be the amount of those 

 secondary or adaptive modifications which his structure so conspi- 



recognise two other equivalent sub-types among the Catarrhina (Geof.), viz. 

 that constituted by the two genera Semnopithecus and Colobus, and that by 

 the remainder, or the sub-divisions Cercopithecusy Cercocebus, Macacics, Inuusj 

 and Cynocephalus ; each of these three higher divisions presenting exclusive 

 characters, unnecessary to detail here. 



