113 
A succinct History of the Controversy respecting the Cerebral 
Structure of Man and the Apes. 
Up to the year 1857 all anatomists of authority, who had occupied themselves 
with the cerebral structure of the Apes—Cuvier, Tiedemann, Sandifort, Vrolik, 
Isidore G. St. Hilaire, Schroeder van der Kolk, Gratiolet-—were agreed that the 
brain of the Apes possesses a POSTERIOR LOBE. 
Tiedemann, in 1825, figured and acknowledged in the text of his ‘Icones,’ 
the existence of the PosTERIOR coRNU of the lateral ventricle in the Apes, not 
only under the title of ‘ Scrobiculus parvus loco cornu posterioris—a fact which 
has been paraded—but as ‘cornu posterius’ (Icones, p. 54), a circumstance 
which has been, as sedulously, kept in the back ground. 
Cuvier (Lecons, T. iii. p. 103) says, “ the anterior or lateral ventricles possess 
a digital cavity [posterior cornu] only in Man and the Apes..... . Its 
presence depends on that of the posterior lobes.” 
Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik, and Gratiolet, had also figured and 
described the posterior cornu in various Apes. As to the Hippocampus MINOR 
Tiedemann had erroneously asserted its absence in the Apes; but Schroeder van 
der Kolk and Vrolik had pointed out the existence of what they considered 
a rudimentary one in the Chimpanzee, and Gratiolet had expressly affirmed its 
existence in these animals, Such was the state of our information on these 
subjects in the year 1856. . 
In the year 1857, however, Professor Owen, either in ignorance of these well- 
known facts or else unjustifiably suppressing them, submitted to the Linnzan 
Society a paper “ On the Characters, Principles of Division, and Primary Groups 
of the Class Mammalia,” which was printed in the Society’s Journal, and contains 
the following passage :—‘‘In Man, the brain presents an ascensive step in de- 
velopment, higher and more strongly marked than that by which the preceding 
sub-class was distinguished from the one below it. Not only do the cerebral 
hemispheres overlap the olfactory lobes and cerebellum, but they extend in 
advance of the oneand further back than the other, The posterior development 
is so marked, that anatomists have assigned to that part the character of a third 
lobe ; é is peculiar to the genus Homo, and equally peculiar is the posterior horn 
I 
