CORPOREAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN. IS 



elevated ; in most quadrupeds it is situated at the extremity of 

 the cranium obliquely, with its posterior parts turned upwards, 

 and is in some completely vertical. On this difference of situation, 

 Daubenton founded his occipital angle. r He drew one line from 

 the posterior edge of the foramen to the lower edge of the orbit, 

 and another, in the direction of the foramen, passing between the 

 condyles and intersecting the former. According to the angle 

 formed, he established the similarity and diversity of crania. 

 The information derived from it in this respect is very imperfect, 

 because it shows the differences of the occiput merely. Blumen- 

 bach remarks that its variations are included between 80 and 90 

 in most quadrupeds which differ very essentially in other points. 



The want of the ossa intermaxillaria has been thought peculiar 

 to mankind. Quadrupeds, and nearly all the ape tribe, have two 

 bones between the superior maxillary, containing the denies in- 

 cisores when these are present, and termed ossa intermaxillaria, 

 incisoria, or labialia. But these do not exist universally in them. 8 

 Man only has a prominent chin : his lower jaw is the shortest, 

 compared with the cranium, and its condyles differ in form, direc- 

 tion, and articulation, from those of any brute : in no brute are 

 the teeth arranged in such a close and uniform series ; the lower 

 incisores, like the jaw in which they are fixed, are perpendicular, 

 a distinct characteristic of man, for in brutes they slope back- 

 backwards with the jaw bone; the canine are not longer than the 

 rest, nor insulated as in monkeys ; the molares differ from those 

 of the orang utan and of all the genus simia by their singularly 

 obtuse projections. 



The slight hairiness of the human skin in general, although 

 certain parts, as the pubes and axillae, are more copiously fur- 

 nished with hair than in brutes ; the omnivorous structure of the 

 alimentary canal ; the curve of the vagina corresponding with the 

 curve of the sacrum formerly mentioned, preventing woman from 

 being, as brute females are, retromingent ; the peculiar structure 



r Memoires de f Academie des Sciences de Paris. 1764. 



s In a chimpanzee that died at Exeter Change a few years ago, the statement 

 of Tyson and Daubenton was verified, that this black ape has no intermaxillary 

 bone. The red-haired variety (Simia Satyrus) has it, and is said to be destitute of 

 nails on the hind thumbs and of ligamentum teres at the head of the os femoris, 

 both which structures this chimpanzee possessed. The Satyrus is therefore not so 

 near the human subject as the Troglodytes. In a simia satyrus, however, lately 

 dissected at the Zoological Gardens, the hind thumbs possessed nails. Proceed- 

 ings, $c. Nov. 23. 1830. 



