190 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



In October, 1489, Dr. G. A. Perkins brought to me two addi- 

 tional crania which formed the subject of a second memoir. 



In 1859, Mr. P. B. Du Chaillu arrived in New York with a 

 large collection of the skins and skeletons of the gorilla. These 

 he kindly placed at my disposal. My notes on his collection 

 were printed in his book of travels. The account of the dis- 

 section of a young gorilla preserved in alcohol and which he 

 presented to me was printed in the Proceedings of the Boston 

 Society of Natural History, vol. 7, 1860, p. 211, and in vol. 9, 

 p. 203. 



[SIGNED] JEFFRIES WYMAN, CAMBRIDGE, June 18, 1866. 



His studies of the two African apes naturally led Wyman to 

 compare them with one another and with man. His second 

 paper on the gorilla (American Journal Science and Arts, n. s., 

 vol. 9, 1850, pp. 34-45) contains unusually positive expressions: 



"Owen regards the gorilla as the most anthropoid of all known 

 brutes. After a careful examination of his memoir I am forced 

 to the conclusion that the preponderance of evidence is unequivo- 

 cally opposed to the opinion there recorded. . . . There seems 

 to be no alternative but to regard the Chimpanzee as holding 

 the highest place in the brute creation [p. 41). No reasonable 

 ground for doubt remains, that the Enge-ena [gorilla] occupies a 

 lower position and consequently recedes further from man than 

 the Chimpanzee [p. 42]. ' Jl 



The same paper contains a really extraordinary indeed, for 

 Wyman, almost anomalous feature, viz., the formulation of a 

 generalization without intimating the actual or probable occur- 

 rence of exceptions. On p. 41, in describing the cranium of a 

 gorilla, he says: 



"In man, the intermaxillary bones form a projecting ridge on 

 the median line both in and below the nasal orifice and at the 



1 It will be noted that two questions are involved, viz., (a) of the two 

 African apes, gorilla and chimpanzee, which resembles man the more nearly? 

 and (b) is either of them the highest animal? Both Wyman and Owen ap- 

 pear to assume that it is merely a choice between the two. Waiving for the 

 present the interesting question as to whether even man is the highest from 

 a purely structural standpoint, there are certain features of the brain of the 

 Bornean ape, the orang, that are more anthropoid than those of the two 

 African forms. 



