MISCELLANY. 
380 
of his friends, than more brilliant ones, nominally representing the same person, 
but modelled after the Venus de Medicis and the Apollo Belvidere. 
But the Wanderer is wandering from his subject. The want of connexion 
between the cuts and the accompanying text is the difficulty before us ; and that 
difficulty he hopes to obviate on a future, and, mayhap, not far distant occasion, 
by reprinting these chapters, with an illustrative cut at the head of each.— Ento-' 
mological Magazine, No. XX., July^ 1837, Vol. IV., p. 409—10. 
Organization of the Oran Outan. —M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire has recently 
presented to the Academie des Sciences the following observations on this sub¬ 
ject :—If we compare the Oran Outan with Man, we perceive the most remarkable 
conformity in all their parts. There is not a vessel, nor a nerve, nor a muscular 
fibre, more or less; but, at the same time, each organic element presents 
modifications in the length and thickness of the parts. The vertebral axis is 
comparatively shorter, not from the absence of any of its parts, but on account 
of their vertical compression. The head is generally larger, but more in appear¬ 
ance than in reality. The neck seems wanting, the parts which form it seeming 
to belong to the hind-head, and to prolong it to the shoulders. This is produced 
by the following mechanism. In the Oran, as in the Bats, the clavicles are ex¬ 
tremely long; and to be kept beneath the integuments without occupying too 
much room, they are directed obliquely, so that their outer extremity has, 
as it were, ascended towards the skull, and drawn with it a certain number of 
muscles, which, adding to their thickness that of the muscles peculiar to the 
posterior region of the neck, fill up the wide groove formed by the series of 
spinous processes, which are themselves very large. The action of this strong 
layer of cervical muscles tends to throw the head backwards. The animal, in 
consequence of this general modification, must keep its body and head parallel 
to the trunk of the tree on which it resides, clinging to it by the extremities, 
and also fixing itself by the hands to the branches which are small enough to be 
laid hold of. The brain of the young Oran Outan bears a great resemblance to 
that of a child. The skull might, in fact, be taken, at an early age, for that of 
the latter, and the illusion would be almost perfect, were it not for the develop¬ 
ment of the bones of the face. But it happens, in consequence of its advance 
in age, that the brain ceases to enlarge, while its case continually increases. 
The latter becomes thickened, but in an unequal degree, enormous bony ridges 
appear, and the animal assumes a frightful aspect. When we compare the 
effects of age in Man and the Oran Outan, the difference is seen to be, that, in 
the latter, there is a super-development of the osseous, muscular, and tegu¬ 
mentary systems more towards the upper than the lower parts, while the 
development of the brain is entirely arrested.— Edinburgh Journal of Natural 
History and the Physical Sciences^ Part vii.—-|^The most important point of 
No, 13, Vol. II. 3 f 
