204 LLOYDS NATURAL HISTORY. 



scale — Man, if his adult and perfect stature be compared with 

 theirs, exhibits, as might be expected, a marvellous likeness of 

 organisation. He resembles them as they resemble one another 

 — he differs from them as they differ from one another." 

 {Huxley) On comparing his external form and internal organ- 

 isation with that of all the other known zoological forms, he is 

 found to fit no niche in the scale of classification, founded on 

 the same principles of likeness and dissimihtude as appli-ed to 

 them, except in the vicinity of the Gibbons, the Orangs, the 

 Gorillas, and the Chimpanzees, of whose order — the Primates — 

 he forms only an additional though higher Family, solely on 

 his structural characters and entirely apart from those intangible 

 mental attributes which remove him supremely above all other 

 creatures. Unbridged as is the chasm between the Ape and Man, 

 *' the structural differences which separate Man from the Gorilla 

 and the Chimpanzee, are not so great as those which separate 

 the greater from the lower Apes." {Huxley.') 



Of the three higher Apes, the Chimpanzees are those which 

 appear to approach Man most closely j but he is distinguished 

 from them and from all the other members of the Simiidce by his 

 body being supported in the erect position upon the outer edge 

 of a broad, arched, short-toed foot, articulated at right angles 

 to the leg. This foot has a prominent heel and a stout great- 

 toe, longer than all the digits, except the second, but lying 

 parallel and not opposable to them, or capable of being moved 

 away from them, because of the fiat unrounded articular surface 

 of the ento-cuneiform bone of the ankle. His back-bone has a 

 strongly-marked, open S-shaped curvature, with its concavity in 

 the lower back, giving it its elasticity and breaking any shock 

 which might be transmitted otherwise to the brain through the 

 jolt of walking in the vertical position. His arms are proportion- 



