300 PLEASANT WA YS IN SCIENCE. 



The gorilla must, I fear, be summarily ejected from the 

 position of honour to which he has been raised by many 

 naturalists. Though the gorilla is a much larger animal 

 than the chimpanzee, his brain barely equals the chim- 

 panzee's in mass. It is also less fully developed in front. 

 In fact, Gratiolet asserts that of all the broad-chested apes, 

 the gorilla is so far as brain character is concerned the 

 lowest and most degraded. He regards the gorilla's brain 

 as only a more advanced form of that of the brutal baboons, 

 while the orang's brain is the culminating form of the gibbon 

 type, and the chimpanzee's the culminating form of the 

 macaque type. This does not dispose of the difficulty very 

 satisfactorily, however, because it remains to be shown 

 whether the gibbon type and the macaque type are superior 

 as types to the baboon types. But it may suffice to remark 

 that the baboons are all brutal and ferocious, whereas the 

 gibbons are comparatively gentle animals, and the macaques 

 docile and even playful. It may be questioned whether 

 brutality and ferocity should be regarded as necessarily 

 removing the gorilla further from man ; because it is certain 

 that the races of man which approach nearest to the an- 

 thropoid apes, with which races the comparison should 

 assuredly be made, are characterized by these very qualities, 

 brutality and ferocity. Intelligence must be otherwise 

 gauged. Probably the average proportion ot the brain's 

 weight to that of the entire body, and the complexity of 

 the structure of the brain, would afford the best means of 

 deciding the question. But, unfortunately, we have very 

 unsatisfactory evidence on these points. The naturalists 

 who have based opinions on such evidence as has been 

 obtained, seem to overlook the poverty of the evidence. 

 Knowing as we do how greatly the human brain varies in 

 size and complexity, not only in different races, but in 

 different individuals of the same race, it appears unsatis- 

 factory in the extreme to regard the average of the 

 brains of each simian species hitherto examined as present 

 ing the true average cerebral capacity for each species. 



