JEFFRIES WYMAN 191 



middle of the border of this opening form the projecting 'nasal 

 spine,' which is not met with in any of the lower animals, and 

 is therefore an anatomical character peculiar to man." 



The italics are his, a rare instance of emphasis of his own views. 1 



Intimately associated with the subjects of the papers just named 

 is his elaborate exposition of The Cancellated Structure of those 

 Bones which have a Definite Relation to the Erect Position which is 

 Naturally assumed by Man alone. Communicated to the Natural 

 History Society in 1849, ft was not published until 1857 ; fortunately, 

 as stated in the note to p. 173, it was reprinted in 1902 by Wyman's 

 elder brother as part of a volume on Animal Mechanics. There 

 are described and figured, from sections of human bones, arrange- 

 ments of the lamellae and intervening spaces, mechanically adapted 

 to sustaining the weight of man in the erect attitude; he adds: 

 "The only animals in which I have detected any approach to the 

 structure of the neck of the thigh [bone] in man are the chimpanzee 

 and the gorilla. ... In these slight traces of the trusswork 

 exist." 



Wyman's judicial temperament was never more needed or 

 more conspicuous than in his treatment of the ever-vexing prob- 

 lems of the differences and relative rank of the several human 

 races; then, as now, in this country, those problems constituted 

 a " Negro Question." 



As early as 1847, m h* 8 nrs t gorilla paper, his views were thus 

 stated: "It cannot be denied that the Negro and the Orang 2 do 

 afford the points where man and the brute, when the totality of 

 their organization is considered, most nearly approach each other." 



Granting any racial differences, and assuming the descent (or 

 ascent) of the human species from one or more ape-like forms now 

 extinct, the validity of the view that from those ancestral stocks 



1 In certain apes and even monkeys has been detected a trace (beginning 

 or proton) of the nasal spine; and there have been recorded several cases of its 

 more or less nearly complete absence in man; practically, however, as stated 

 by Wyman, it constitutes a constant and peculiar human character. 



2 Here, as explained on p. 186, he uses the one word for all the anthropoid 

 or tailless apes, 



