lived from 300 to 500 B.C., who mentions having met wild'men 
in West Africa, which he called ' gorullse." In 1699, Tyson, 
a British anatomist, published a description of a chim- 
panzee, and at a later period, an ourang-outang (woodman), 
from Borneo, became known to naturalists. In 1780, the 
then governor of Batavia, sent to Holland the skeleton of a 
large tail-less ape, named the ' Pongo.' la 1835, it was 
shown by Owen that the Bornean ourang was the young 
form of this pongo, of which there apneared to be two 
species. In 1847, Mr. Stutchbury, then curator of the Insti- 
tution, obtained through the captain of an African vessel 
trading to Bristol, several skulls, three of which were for- 
! warded to Professor Owen for examination, the result of 
which was embodied in a paper in the 3rd vol. of the 
"Zoological Society's Transactions." In 1858, an adult speci- 
men reached the British Museum, since when this ape had 
I attracted much public attention in connexion with the 
I African explorer Du Chaillu. The general form and habits 
' of the animal being tolerably well known, the author 
proceeded to point out some of the special anatomical 
distinctions between it and man on the one hand, 
and the chimpanzee, &c., on the other. The superciliary 
ridges above the eyes were very prominent. The head passed 
by a short thick neck into the trunk, the profile of which 
presented only a single curve, unlike the double curve in 
man, and the vertebrae were nearly all the same size. There 
was very little difference in the size of the limbs at the 
different parts, no calf to the leg for instance, but as regards 
the relative length of the arms to the trunk, and of the arm 
i to the forearm, the gorilla was nearer to man than the other 
I apes, and also in the size of the heel bone and ability to 
apply the foot flatly to the ground, as well as the form of 
the bone of the pelvis. As in all apes, the head was articu- 
lated with the neck at some distance behind the middle, 
where it is in man, and the great size of the lower jaw com- 
pared with that of the brain case gave a very bestial aspect 
to the face. This difference was, however, less in the young 
than the adult state ; in this particular the chimpanzee was 
nearer to man than the gorilla. After going somewhat 
minutely into the cranial characteristics oi the gorilla as 
compared with man, and pointing out that points of re- 
semblance in the young state rapidly became less towards 
maturity, Mr. Swayne concluded a very able paper by ex- 
pressing his belief that a due balancing of all the evidence 
led to the conclusion that, whichever of these apes most 
nearly resembled man, the superiority of one over another 
was of very slight importance in view of the enormous gap 
which separated the highest known ape from the most 
debased type of humanity with which we we were acquainted. 
A short discussion ensued, which was closed by the an- 
nouncement that the hour for closing the meeting had 
arrived. 
WM. LANT CARPENTER, 
I Honorary Reporting Secretary. 
