514 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
As to the first inquiry, the evidence contained in the work servos to 
show that the attempt to raise man too high, zoologically, is unwise ; for 
that an examination of his structure, compared with that of the apes, 
reveals many marks of family resemblance. But as the terms “family,” 
“order,” “group,” &c. are somewhat arbitrary (especially coming 
from a transmutationist), and as it is almost impossible to find two 
naturalists who can agree on the subject ; one claiming for man a distinct 
kingdom by virtue of his psychical faculties, another denying him even an 
ordinal distinction, on the ground of his structural resemblances to the 
apes, and a whole file of zoologists standing intermediate between these 
two extremes ; — we think our readers will agree with us that this should 
be a mere technical debate, and that it contains nothing calculated to 
provoke a popular controversy. 
We quite agree with the author, that it is very absurd to “ base man’s 
dignity on his great toe, or to insinuate that we are lost if an ape has a 
hippocampus minor ; ” and we go with him to the very fullest extent in his 
views concerning the nobility of man (perhaps a little further), believing 
with him that “ the unity of origin of man and brutes,” if it were proved, 
would by no means “ involve the brutalisation and degradation of the 
former.” But who that lays claim to authority in these matters has ever 
made such assertions ? 
If Professor Owen had based man’s dignity and salvation upon such 
trifling features in his anatomy (and we know of no one else to whom 
these remarks can be intended to apply), we should have been ready to 
applaud the author’s attacks upon that naturalist, oft-repeated though 
they be, not only in this volume, but wherever readers or an audience can 
be found to whom such a controversy is deemed interesting. But we 
have never been able to extract from Professor Owen’s publications or 
addresses (and we have read and heard several) any such inference ; and 
when the author declares the question of the “ posterior lobe, the posterior 
cornu, and the hippocampus minor,” to be one affecting his own veracity, 
and time after time, even after he has declared that it is positively his last 
performance in that part, renews his onslaught on his illustrious contem- 
porary, he must not be surprised if a discerning public begins at length 
to think that he resembles the valiant Irishman — who, returning from 
Donnybrook fair, disappointed of his scrimmage (or encouraged by it, we 
forget which), politely requested some one to tread upon his coat-tail, — 
that he is designedly bringing giants into existence in order that he may 
exhibit his valour in slaying them. 
No ; it is not Professor Owen who misapplies the structural resemblances 
and differences between man and the apes ; but it is our author who does 
so. It is he who, ignoring man’s highest mental distinctions, falls back 
upon his anatomy, and upon minor features in his organisation — nominally 
for the “ascertainment of the place which man occupies in Nature, and 
his relation to the universe of things;” but really in the endeavour to 
prove a pet theory, which may or may not be a correct one. As our 
readers are no doubt well aware, the author is a warm advocate of the 
theory of “natural selection;” indeed, in the opinion of some, he out- 
