HOMOLOmCAL STRUCTURES. ^ 



'superfluous here to give further details on the correspond- 

 ence between man and the higher mammals in the structure 

 of the brain and all other parts of the body. 



It may, however, be worth while to specify a few points, 

 not directly or obviously connected with structure, by which 

 this correspondence or relationship is well shown. 



Man is liable to receive from the lower animals, and 

 to communicate to them, certain diseases, as hydrophobia, 

 variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, herpes, etc.;* and 

 ,this fact proves the close similarity f of their tissues and 

 blood, both in minute structure and composition, far more 

 plainly than does their comparison under the best micro- 

 scope, or by the aid of the best chemical analysis. Mon- 

 keys are liable to many of the same non-contagious diseases 

 as we are; thus Rengger,| who carefully observed for a long 

 time the Cehus AzarcB in its native land, found it liable to 

 catarrh, with the usual symptoms, and which, when often 

 recurrent, led to consumption. These monkeys suffered 

 also from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, and cata- 

 ract in the eye. The younger ones when shedding their 

 milk-teeth often died from fever. Medicines produced the 

 same effect on them as on us. Many kinds of monkeys 

 have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors: 

 they will also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with 

 pleasure. Brehm asserts that the natives of north-eastern 

 Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with 

 strong beer, by which they are made drunk. He has seen 

 some of these animals, which he kept in confinement, in 



* Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay lias treated this subject at some length 

 in the " Journal of Mental Science," July, 1871; and in the "Edin- 

 burgh Veterinary Review," July, 1858. 



f A Reviewer has criticised ("British Quarterly Review," Oct. 1, 

 1871, p. 472) what I have here said with much severity and contempt; 

 but as I do not use the term identity, I cannot see that I am greatly 

 in error. There appears to me a strong analogy between the same 

 infection or contagion producing the same result, or one closely simi- 

 lar, in two distinct animals, and the testing of two distinct fluids by 

 the same chemical reagent. 



J " Naturgeschichte der Siiugethiere von Paraguay," 1830, s. 50. 



The same tastes are common to some animals much lower in the 

 scale. Mr. A. Nichols informs me that he kept in Queensland, in 

 Australia, three individuals of the Phaseolarctus cinerens; and that, 

 without having, been taught in any way, they acquired a strong tast-e 

 for rum and smoking tobacco. 



