258 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE EXTERNAL CHARACTERS 



head upon the trunk in the erect attitude ; the small premaxillaries and concomitant 

 small size of the incisor teeth as compared with the molar teeth. The latter character 

 relates to the superiority of the psychical over the physical powers in Man : it governs 

 the feature in which Man recedes from the brute ; as does also the prominence of the 

 nasal bones in most, and in all the typical, races of Man. The somewhat angular form 

 of the bony orbits, tending to a square, with the corners rounded off, is a good Human 

 character of the skull, which is difficult to comprehend as an adaptive one, and therefore 

 the better in the present inquiry. The same may be said of the production of the floor 

 of the tympanic or auditory tube into the plate called "vaginal." 



Believing the foregoing to be sufficient to test the respective degrees of affinity to 

 Man within the limited group of Quadrumana to which it is proposed, in the present 

 Memoir, to apply them, the argument need not be diluted by citing minor characters. 

 The question at issue is the respective degrees of affinity as between the anthropoid 

 Apes and Man. Cuvier deemed the Orang (Pithecus) to be nearer akin to Man than 

 the Chimpanzee {Troglodytes) is. That belief has long ceased to be entertained. I 

 proceed, therefore, to compare the Gorilla, Chimpanzee, and Gibbon, in reference to 

 their Human affinities. 



Most naturalists entering upon this question would first look to the premaxillary 

 bones, or, owing to the early confluence of those bones with the maxillaries in the 

 Gorilla and Chimpanzee, to the part of the upper jaw containing the incisive teeth, on 

 the size and direction of which depends the prognathic or brutish character of a skull. 

 Now the extent of the premaxillaries below the nostril is not only relatively but abso- 

 lutely less in the Gorilla, and consequently the profile of the skull is less convex at this 

 part, or less " prognathic," than in the Chimpanzee. Notwithstanding the degree in 

 which the skull of the Gorilla surpasses in size that of the Chimpanzee, especially when 

 the two are compared on a front view, the breadth of the premaxillaries and of the four 

 incisive teeth is the same in both. In the relative degree, therefore, in which these 

 bones are smaller than in the Chimpanzee, the Gorilla, in this most important character, 

 comes nearer to Man. In the Gibbons the incisors are relatively smaller than in the 

 Gorilla, but the premaxillaries bear the same proportional size in the adult male Siamang. 



Next, as regards the nasal bones. In the Chimpanzee, as in the Orangs and Gibbons, 

 they are as flat to the face as in any of the lower Simice. In the Gorilla the median 

 coalesced margins of the upper half of the nasal bones are produced forward, in a slight 

 degree it is true, but affording a most significant evidence of nearer resemblance to Man. 

 In the same degree they impress that anthropoid feature upon the face of the living 

 Gorilla. In some pig-faced Baboons there are ridges and prominences in the naso-facial 

 part of the skull, but they do not really affect the question as between the Gorilla and 

 Chimpanzee. All naturalists know that the Semnopitheques of Borneo have long noses ; 

 but the proboscidiform appendage which gives so ludicrous a mask to those Monkeys is 

 unaccompanied by any such modification of the nose-bones as gives the true anthropoid 



