452 . DARWINISM chap. 



man are very numerous and exceedingly complex, sometimes 

 one species, sometimes another agreeing most neai'ly with 

 ourselves, thus presenting a tangled web of affinities which it 

 is very difficult to unravel. Estimated by the skeleton alone, 

 the chimpanzee and gorilla seem nearer to man than the 

 orang, which last is also inferior as presenting certain aberra- 

 tions in the muscles. In the form of the ear the gorilla is 

 more human than any other ape, while in the tongue the 

 orang is the more man -like. In the stomach and liver the 

 gibbons approach nearest to man, then come the orang and 

 chimpanzee, while the gorilla has a degraded liver more 

 resembling that of the lower monkeys and baboons. 



The Brains of Man and Apes. 



"We come now to that part of his organisation in which 

 man is so much higher than all the lower animals — the brain ; 

 and here, Mr. Mivart informs us, the orang stands highest 

 in rank. The height of the orang's cerebrum in front is 

 greater in proportion than in either the chimpanzee or the 

 gorilla. " On comparing the brain of man with the brains of 

 the orang, chimpanzee, and baboon, we find a successive 

 decrease in the frontal lobe, and a successive and very great 

 increase in the relative size of the occipital lobe. Con- 

 comitantly with this increase and decrease, certain folds of 

 brain substance, called ' bridging convolutions,' which in man 

 are conspicuously interposed between the parietal and 

 occipital lobes, seem as utterly to disappear in the chim- 

 panzee, as they do in the baboon. In the orang, however, 

 though much reduced, they are still to be distinguished. . . . 

 The actual and absolute mass of the brain is, however, slightly 

 greater in the chimpanzee than in the orang, as is the relative 

 vertical extent of the middle part of the cerebrum, although, 

 as already stated, the frontal portion is higher in the orang ; 

 while, according to M. Gratiolet, the gorilla is not only 

 inferior to the orang in cerebral development, but even to his 

 smaller African congener, the chimpanzee." ^ 



On the whole, then, we find that no one of the great apes 

 can be positively asserted to be nearest to man in structure. 

 Each of them approaches him in certain characteristics, while 

 1 Man and Apes, pp. 138, 144. 



