SKELETON-MAN. 



SKELETON-GORILLA. 



uncouth arms, with those enormous paws at their extremities ; its short, bowed, and 

 tottering legs, unable to support the huge body without the help of the arms ; the 

 massive jaw-bones and protruding face, put the creature at an unappreciable distance 

 from humanity, even though it is represented in an attitude as similar to that of the 

 human being as the organization of the bones will permit. Any one who could fancy 

 himself to be descended, however remotely, from such a being, is welcome to his 

 ancestry. 



Contrast with the skeleton of the gorilla, that of man. Light in structure, and 

 perfectly balanced on the small and delicate feet ; the slender arms, with their char- 

 acteristic hands ; the smooth and rounded skull ; the small jaw-bones and regular teeth, 

 all show themselves as the framework of a being whose strength is to lie in his intellect, 

 and not in the mere brute power of bone and muscle. There seems to be a strange 

 eloquence inform, which speaks at once to the heart in language that can only be felt, 

 and is beyond the power of analysis to resolve. Thus, the contrasted shapes of these 

 two frames speak more forcibly of the immeasurable distance between the two beings 

 of which they form a part, than could be expressed in many pages of careful description. 

 Strength for strength, the ape is many times the man's superior, and could rend him 

 to pieces in single combat. But that slender human frame can be so intellectually 

 strengthened, that a single man could destroy a troop of apes, if he so desired, and 

 without offering them the possibility of resistance. 



One great cause of the awkward bipedal walk of the monkey tribes, is the position 

 of the orifice in the skull, through which the spinal cord enters the brain. In the 

 human skull this orifice is so placed that the head is nearly equally balanced, and a 

 considerable portion of the skull projects behind it ; but in the lower animals, this 



