190 
THE DESCENT OF MAN. 
Part I. 
blances in other less important or quite unimportant 
points. 
The greater number of, naturalists who ha, ye taken 
into consideration the whole structure of man, including 
his mental faculties, have followed Blumenbach and 
Cuvier, and have placed man in a separate Order, under 
the title of the Bimana, and therefore on an equality 
with the Orders of the Quadrumana, Carnivora, &c. 
Recently many of our best naturalists have recurred to 
the view first propounded by Linnaeus, so remarkable for 
his sagacity, and have placed man in the same Order 
with the Quadrumana, under the title of the Primates. 
The justice of this conclusion will be admitted if, in 
the first place, we bear in mind the remarks just 
made on the comparatively small importance for classi- 
fication of the great development of the brain in man ; 
bearing, also, in mind that the strongly-marked differ- 
ences between the skulls of man and the Quadrumana 
(lately insisted upon by Bisclioff, Aeby, and others) 
apparently follow from their differently developed brains. 
In the second place, we must remember that nearly all 
the other and more important differences between man 
and the Quadrumana are manifestly adaptive in their 
nature, and relate chiefly to the erect position of man ; 
such as the structure of his hand, foot, and pelvis, the 
curvature of his spine, and the position of his head. 
The family of seals offers a good illustration of the 
small importance of adaptive characters for classification. 
These animals differ from all other Carnivora in the 
form of their bodies and in the structure of their limbs, 
far more than does man from the higher apes ; vet m 
every system, from that of Cuvier to the most recent 
one by Mr. Flower , 4 seals are ranked as a mere family 
* 4 Proc. Zoolog. Soc/ 1869, p. 4. 
