1904.] Anthropoid Apes. 633 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 6, 1904. 



Sib James Crichton-Browne, M.D. LL.D. F.K.S., Treasurer 

 and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



P. Chalmers Mitchell, Esq., D.Sc. Sec. Z.S. 



Anthropoid Apes. 



Had it been my lot to be in control of Zoological Gardens long 

 before the chalk cliffs of Dover were formed, there would have been 

 no lack of strange creatures to excite the interest of the visitors on a 

 primeval Bank Holiday. But there would have been no lions and 

 tigers, no elephants, hippotamuses or rhinoceroses, no zebras or 

 giraffes, no apes or monkeys. Grotesque and gigantic flying, running, 

 hopping and crawling creatures would have been there, creatures 

 adapted for browsing, or gnawing, or flesh-eating ; but the great 

 group of mammalian animals, which now plays so large a part in the 

 economy of the earth, would have been represented by a few small 

 and inconspicuous creatures, probably placed in an obscure corner of 

 the reptile house of the Jurassic Zoo. These primitive mammals 

 had small skulls with very small brains, long jaws with many teeth 

 in a single even row along the margin, and their flat hands and feet 

 had five fingers or toes. From such simple beginnings the great 

 groups of existing mammals became specialised in different ways. 

 The group Primates, for instance, which contains the lemurs, monkeys, 

 apes and man, retained primitive characters, such as a relatively even 

 row of teeth, a flat foot and hand, each provided with five digits, 

 and each digit protected by a shield intermediate between a hoof and 

 a claw. On the other hand, in this group the skull and the brain 

 became highly specialised, and the upright posture, with its attendant 

 modifications of structure, was gradually assumed. 



[The lecturer then described the special characters of anthropoid 

 apes, and gave an account of the natural history of the gibbons, 

 orang-utans, gorillas and chimpanzees, exhibiting a series of lantern 

 slides made from photographs of specimens that had lived in the 

 London Zoological Gardens.] 



The great anatomists of last century, and in particular Huxley 

 and Darwin, showed clearly the essential similarity in the structure 

 of the great apes and man ; and from their work, and the work of later 

 observers, it may be taken as abundantly jDroved that in the primate 

 series there is a less gap between the great apes and man than there 

 is between the great apes and ordinary monkeys. I may take the 



