134: HISTORY OF THE CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE 



ceding sub-class was distinguished from the one below it. Not only 

 do the cerebral hemispheres overlap the olfactory lobes and cerebel- 

 lum, but they extend in advance of the one and further back than 

 the other. The posterior development is so marked, that anatomists 

 have assigned to that part the character of a third lobe ; it is peculiar 

 to the genus Homo, and equally peculiar is tlit, posterior horn of the late- 

 ral ventricle and the ' hippocampus minor ' which characterise the hind 

 lobe of each hemisphere.' 1 '' Journal of the Proceedings of the Linncean 

 Society, Vol. ii. p. 19. 



As the essay in which this passage stands had no less ambitious 

 an aim than the remodelling of the classification of the Mammalia, 

 its author might be supposed to have written under a sense of pecu- 

 liar responsibility, and to have tested, with especial care, the state- 

 ments he ventured to promulgate. And even if this be expecting 

 too much, hastiness, or want of opportunity for due deliberation, can- 

 not now be pleaded in extenuation of any shortcomings ; for the 

 propositions cited were repeated two years afterwards in the Reade 

 Lecture, delivered before so grave a body as the University of Cam- 

 bridge, in 1859. 



When the assertions, which I have italicised in the above extract, 

 first came under my notice, I was not a little astonished at so flat a 

 contradiction of the doctrines current among well-informed anato- 

 mists ; but, not unnaturally imagining that the deliberate state- 

 ments of a responsible person must have some foundation in fact, I 

 deemed it my duty to investigate the subject anew before the time 

 at which it would be my business to lecture thereupon came round. 

 The result of my inquiries was to prove that Mr. Owen's three asser- 

 tions, that " the third lobe, the posterior horn of the lateral ventri- 

 cle, and the hippocampus minor," are " peculiar to the genus Homo? 

 are contrary to the plainest facts. I communicated this conclusion 

 to the students of my class ; and then, having no desire to embark 

 in a controversy which could not redound to the honour of British 

 science, whatever its issue, I turned to more congenial occupations. 



The time speedily arrived, however, when a persistence in this 

 reticence would have involved me in an unworthy paltering with 

 truth. 



At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, in 1860, 

 Professor Owen repeated these assertions in my presence, and, of 

 course, I immediately gave them a direct and unqualified contradic- 

 tion, pledging myself to justify that unusual procedure elsewhere. 



