270 FIRST LESSONS tN ZOOLOGY. 



Man is widely separated from the monkeys ana apes in 

 being endowed with well-dereloped reasoning and moral 

 powers, in having the faculty of speech, and in possessing 

 a religious nature, being able to apprehend the existence of 

 a Creator, the Author of Nature. But zoologically the ab- 

 solute differences from the monkeys and apes are so slight 

 as to lead naturalists to rank man in the same order as 

 those creatures. 



The absolute differences between man and the apes are 

 these : his brain is at least double the size of that of the 

 highest ape, the gorilla, while the difference between the 

 skulls of the gorilla and man is very great. 



In man the skull overhangs the orbits ; in the gorilla the 

 forehead is hollowed out. The hinder portion of the brain 

 is also much more developed in man than in the apes, and 

 in the hinder part of the hemispheres the convolutions are 

 more numerous than in the chimpanzee, this part in mon- 

 keys in most cases losing its convolutions. Man stands erect; 

 his arms span a distance equal to his height; the spinal 

 column has four curves; the skin of the hands and feet of 

 man is highly sensitive compared with that of the apes. 



Naturalists are now agreed that there is but one species 

 of man. Blumenbach, from the shape of the skull and the 

 color of the skin, divided mankind into three varieties, — the 

 white or Caucasian, the brown or Mongolian, and the black 

 or Ethiopian; considering the American variety as connect- 

 ing the Caucasian and Mongolian, and the Malayan as in- 

 termediate between the Caucasian and Ethiopian. Cuvier 

 also believed that there were three primary races of men, — 

 the white or Caucasian, the yellow or Mongolian, and the 

 black or Ethiopian race; and this grouping is still regarded 

 ,by some of the best authorities as perhaps the simplest and 

 best. 



This ends our survey of the animal kingdom. We have 

 seen that, on the whole, it comprises a series of forms rang- 

 ing from the microscopic, simple monad to man. We 

 have seen a gradual increase in the number of organs and 



