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qualification of any kind. He (Professor Huxley), on the other hand, 
affirmed that the three assertions of Professor Owen were groundless, 
inasmuch as the three structures spoken of were, instead of being peculiar 
to the human brain, often letter developed in the higher apes than in man. 
He deprecated the present discussion as useless and full of evil, but he was 
bound to take up the challenge that had been thus thrown down to him. 
He believed, however, that the differences between man and the lower 
animals are those of the moral and intellectual faculties, and are not to be 
expressed by physical differences in his toes or his brain. 
Professor Rolleston, F.R.S., said, it had been abundantly shown that 
the hippocampus minor and the posterior lobe were insufficient as differential 
points, and must be given up at last. He regretted that the labours of 
Gratiolet had been ignored in this discussion, a circumstance little credit- 
able to British science. He had proved that the differences between the 
brain of man and the ape were : 1st, its greater absolute weight ; 2nd, its 
greater absolute height; and 3rd, the multifidity of the frontal lobes cor- 
responding to the forehead, usually (and correctly) taken as a fair 
exponent of man’s intelligence. It was to th z front rather than to the back 
of the brain that he should look for the distinguishing characteristics of 
man. But Professor Owen had made no allusion to these important matters. 
Mr. W. H. Flower, F.R.C.S., conservator of the museum of the College 
of Surgeons, said that, looking at the subject solely from an anatomical 
point of view, and as a question of fact, the result of his dissection of a 
larger number of monkeys’ brains than had perhaps fallen to the lot of 
any one else present was, that the parts referred to by Professor Owen as 
peculiar to man are, in reality, proportionately more largely developed in 
many monkeys. If these parts were to be used in the classification of 
the mammalia, the series would be, — first, the little Soutli-American 
marmosets ; next the baboons ; then the cercopithecs, the magots ; then 
man, followed by the orang-outang, chimpanzee, and gorilla; and last 
the American howling monkey. 
Dr. Humphry thought that slight difference of structure might lead to 
vast functional results, and that a moral hiatus might be greatly out of 
proportion to any mere physical distinction. 
After a few words from Professor Owen, in reply to Professor Rolleston, 
the discussion ceased. 
(During this discussion the writer had an opportunity of examining a 
dissected brain of a cercopithec in spirits, which Mr. Flower chanced to 
have with him, and in which the posterior cornu and hippocampus minor 
were very distinctly visible.) 
Mr. James Samuelson : Recent Experiments on Heterogenesis, or 
Spontaneous Generation.” The author communicated the results derived 
from the simultaneous exposure of various kinds of infusions prepared by 
him in Hull, Paris, and Liverpool. Amongst these results the following 
afford fresh evidence against the theory of spontaneous generation, and 
tend to prove the existence of innumerable germs of life in the atmosphere. 
Dr. Balbiani (the author’s coadjutor in Paris) found certain well-defined 
species of infusoria in his infusions, which he also discovered in the 
moistened dust from his window ; and another well-marked species, found 
