13 



Man has twelve pairs of ribs, the Gorilla and Chimpanzee have 

 thirteen pairs, the Orangs have tvfelve pairs, the Gibbons have thir- 

 teen pairs. Were the naturalist to trust to this single character, 

 as some have trusted to the cranio-facial one, and in equal ignorance 

 of the real condition and value of both, he might think that the 

 Orangs (Pithecus) were nearer akin to man than the Chimpanzees 

 {Troglodytes) are. But man has sometimes a thirteenth pair of 

 ribs ; and what we term " ribs" are but vertebral elements or 

 appendages common to nearly all the true vertebrae in man, and 

 only so called, when they become long and free. The genera Homo, 

 Troglodytes, and Pithecus, have precisely the same number of ver- 

 tebree ; if Troglodytes, by the development and mobility of the pleur- 

 apophyses of the twentieth vertebra from the occiput, seem to have 

 an additional thoracic vertebra, it has one vertebra less in the lumbar 

 region. So, if there be, as has been observed, a difference in the 

 number of sacral vertebrse, it is merely due to a last lumbar having 

 coalesced with what v?e reckon as the first sacral vertebra in Man. 



The thirteen pairs of ribs, therefore, in the Gorilla and Chimpan- 

 zee, are of no weight, as against the really important characters sig- 

 nificative of affinity with the human type. But, supposing the fact 

 of any real value, how do the advocates of the superior resemblance 

 of the Siamang's or Gibbon's skeleton to that of man dispose of the 

 thirteenth pair of ribs ? 



In applying the characters of the skull to the determination of the 

 important question at issue, those must first be ascertained by which 

 the genus Homo trenchantly differs from the genus Simia, of Lin- 

 naeus. To determine these osteal distinctions, the author stated 

 that he had compared the skulls of many individuals of different 

 varieties of the human race together with those of the male, female, 

 and young of species of Troglodytes, Pithecus, and Hylohates ; 

 Professor Owen referred to his ' Catalogue of the Osteological Series 

 in the Museum of the Boyal College of Surgeons,' 4to, 18.53, for 

 the detailed results of these comparisons. On the present occasion 

 he would restrict himself to a few of these results. 



The first and most obvious differential character is the globular 

 form of the brain-case, and its superior relative size to the face, 

 especially the jaws, in man. But this, for the reasons he had already 

 assigned, is not an instructive or decisive character, when comparing 

 quadrumanous species, in reference to the question at issue. It is 

 exaggerated in the human child, owing to the acquisition of its full, 

 or nearly full size, by the brain, before the jaws have expanded to 

 lodge the second set of teeth. It is an anthropoid character in 

 which the Quadrumana resemble man, in proportion to the dimi- 

 nution of their general bulk. If a Gorilla, with milk-teeth, have a 

 somewhat larger brain and brain-case than a Chimpanzee at the same 

 immature age, the acquisition of greater bulk by the Gorilla, and of a 

 more formidable physical development of the skull, in reference to the 

 great canines in the male, will give to the Chimpanzee the appearance 

 of a more anthropoid character, which really does not belong to it, — 

 which could be as little depended upon in a question of precise affi- 



