634 ZOOLOGY. 



and ferocity of the creature is evinced by the thick supra- 

 orbital ridges and the high sagittal and lambdoidal crests on 

 the top of the skull ; the face is wide and long, the nose 

 broad and flat, the lips and chin prominent. The gorilla 

 walks like the chimpanzee, though it stoops less. It is very 

 ferocious, bold, never running when approached or attacked 

 by man. It lives on a range of mountains in the interior of 

 Guinea, its habitat, so far as known, extending from a little 

 north of the Gaboon Elver to the Congo. 



Thus, to recapitulate, while the gibbons are most remote 

 from man, the orangs approach him nearest in the number 

 of the ribs, the form of the cerebral hemispheres, and other 

 less obvious characters ; the chimpanzee is nearest related to 

 him in the form of the skull, the dentition and the propor- 

 tions of the arms, while the gorilla resembles him more in 

 the proportions of the leg to the body, of the foot to the 

 hand, in the size of the heel, the curvature of the spine, the 

 form of the pelvis and the absolute capacity of the skuU 

 (Huxley). Anatomists have and do differ as to whether the 

 chimpanzee or the gorilla is nearest to man. 



The question whether man {Homo sapiens Linn. ) considered 

 simply as an animal, is the representative of a distinct sub- 

 class, order, suborder or family, is and may never be settled ; 

 though the tendency among zoologists is to leave him among 

 the Primates, where he was placed by Linnaeus. When we 

 consider the slight absolute anatomical differences separating 

 man from the apes, and take into account the great variations 

 in form between the different genera of apes, and still more 

 in the monkeys, it seems best, throwing out, as we have to 

 do in a purely zoological classification, the intellectual and 

 moral faculties of man, to adopt the view that man is 

 the representative of a group of Primates:* The absolute 

 differences of man from the apes consist in the greater num- 

 ber and irregularity of the convolutions of the cerebral hemi- 



* Geoflroy St. Hilaire placed man in a kingdom by himself ; Owen 

 assigned liim to a subclass ; by otliers he is generally regarded as a 

 representative of an order Bimana, as opposed to the order Quadru- 

 mana, or monkeys and apes; while from recent comparative studies 

 man is considered as belonging either to a separate suborder or a fam 

 ilv. 



