76 
The Pelvis, or bony girdle of the hips, of Man is a strik- 
ingly human part of his organization ; the expanded haunch 
bones affording support for his viscera during his habitually 
erect posture, and giving space for the attachment of the 
great muscles which enable him to assume and to preserve 
that attitude. In these respects the pelvis of the Gorilla differs 
very considerably from his (Fig. 16). But go no lower than 
the Gibbon, and see how vastly more he differs’ from the 
Gorilla than the latter does from Man, even in this structure. 
Look at the flat, narrow haunch bones—the long and narrow 
passage—the coarse, outwardly curved, ischiatic prominences 
on which the Gibbon habitually rests, and which are coated 
by the so-called “ callosities,’ dense patches of skin, wholly 
absent in the Gorilla, in the Chimpanzee, and in the Orang, 
as in Man! 
In the lower Monkeys and in the Lemurs the difference 
becomes more striking still, the pelvis acquiring an alto- 
gether quadrupedal character. 
But now let us turn to a nobler and more characteristic 
organ—that by which the human frame seems to be, and 
indeed is, so strongly distinguished from all others, —I 
mean the skull. The differences between a Gorilla’s skull and 
a Man’s are truly immense (Fig. 17). In the former, the face, 
formed largely by the massive jaw-bones, predominates over 
the brain case, or cranium proper: in the latter, the propor- 
tions of the two are reversed. In the Man, the occipital 
foramen, through which passes the great nervous cord con- 
necting the brain with the nerves of the body, is placed just 
behind the centre of the base of the skull, which thus be- 
comes evenly balanced in the erect posture; in the Gorilla, 
it lies in the posterior third of that base. In the Man, the 
surface of the skull is comparatively smooth, and the supra- 
ciliary ridges or brow prominences usually project but little— 
while, in the Gorilla, vast crests are developed upon the skull, 
and the brow ridges overhang the cavernous orbits, like great 
penthouses. 
