24 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE OSTEOLOGY OF 



every other part of the skull for brute force, must strike the eye at once as the leading 

 distinction between the Ape and the Man. 



The superior size of the trunk in proportion to the height of the Gorilla, and the 

 disposition and arrangement of the ribs and pelvis for the support and defence of a 

 more capacious thoracic-abdominal cavity, are more especially conspicuous on a front 

 view (PI. XII.). The trunk of the Gorilla, according to the Human standard, would 

 represent that of a giant of some eight feet in height ; and the jaws and upper limbs 

 have a proportional or corresponding magnitude : but the size of the constituent bones 

 is such as to exhibit, in this part of the skeleton, much greater breadth, strength, and 

 massiveness than is present in the Irish Giant of that height in the Museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons'. 



The plane of the scapula looks less backward in the Gorilla, the glenoid angle being 

 inclined rather more obliquely forward than in Man ; a greater proportion of the 

 posterior surface of the scapula is thus seen in a direct side view of the Gorilla's 

 skeleton; but the position of the thorax in the Human skeleton, photographed for 

 PI. XIII., exaggerates the difference. The effect of the actual difference is to bring 

 the shoulder-joints in the Gorilla more forward than in Man, with a concomitant 

 difference in the usual position of the clavicles, which extend from the sternum more 

 directly outward and less obliquely backward to join the acromion, than in Man. In 

 like manner the joints of the femora, through the shape and direction of the ossa 

 innominata, are brought more forwards, being in advance of, instead of posterior to, 

 the lumbar vertebrae or basis of the true vertebral column. All this, while it favours 

 the application of the limbs to the grasping of the trunk or branch of a tree, takes away, 

 in the same degree, from their adaptability to sustain the body in the erect posture. 



The blade-bones, with their proportionally broader coracoid and acromion, are spread 

 out, by their long clavicular buttresses, beyond the upper part of the thorax, to a greater 

 proportional degree than in Man ; giving a greater breadth across the shoulders, with 

 corresponding advantage and power in the working of the upper extremities. 



These extremities, though so long in respect of the whole body, bear to the trunk 

 nearly the- same proportions as in Man. Take away the lower limbs in both skeletons, 

 and this similarity becomes more obvious. In both the lower ends of the antibrachial 

 bones, as the arm hangs down, reach the same transverse line as the ischial tuberosities ; 

 and they descend scarcely an inch below those parts in the Chimpanzee. The embryonal 

 proportions of the lower limbs brings down the stature of the Gorilla below that of the 

 average in the well-formed European. 



In a skeleton of such, measuring 5 feet 9 inches from the vertex to the sole, the 

 length of the trunk is 2 feet 6 inches ; in the skeleton of a male Gorilla, measuring 



' The trunk in this skeleton, from the atlas to the ischial tuberosities, measures 3 feet 4| inches, that in the 

 Gorilla measuring 3 feet ; but the trunk is supported m the Irish Giant on limbs of nearly twice the length of 

 those in the great Gorilla. 



