WZ-ii f 
VOL. XXXVII. 
WHOLE No. 
No. 38.1 
1495. J 
NEW YORK CITY, SEPT. 11, 1878. 
f PRICE SIX CENTS. 
I £2.50 PER YEAR. 
<Tbr Naturalist. 
ANTHROPOID APES. 
By universal consent the Quadrumana, or 
'four handed animals, occupy the highest rank in 
brute creation. It may, however, be questioned 
whether if Man never existed this place would 
be assigned them by any observing intelligence. 
■Of the flvo divisions into which naturalists 
generally separate the Simiadtc, the apes both by 
their physical organization aud habits, bear the 
• closest resemblance to man. This analogy is so 
striking in the orang-outang, gorilla, chimpan¬ 
zee and gibbon—heuoe called anthropoid apes— 
that not a few naturalists have concluded they 
are inferior varieties of the human race, while 
others maintain that man is either descended 
from the ape or that both have sprung from 
some common ancestor now extinct, aud that 
the present differences between them are due to 
minute differentiations continued in divergent 
linoB through oottutlcss ages. As yet, 
■however, most naturalists are of the opin¬ 
ion of humanity at large, and, disdaining 
to acknowledge any connection between 
themselves aud these grotesque or hid¬ 
eous caricatures of them, attribute the 
numerous points of resemblance to the 
fact that, in the vast multitude of different 
existing animals, a groat number of close 
analogies may arise without the necessity 
for auy consequent relationship between 
the groups iu which they are manifested. 
It must be owned, however, that the 
natural repugnance man feels for so de¬ 
graded a counterpart, is not the least of 
the causes of this opinion ; for in all other 
eases, a close resemblance between differ- 
etni auimals is eertaiuly suggestive of their 
relationship, and t i the strictly scientific 
mind, which eschews prejudice, the in¬ 
ferences from the resemblance of the 
tmoukey to onau, form no exception to this 
rule. Hence the illustrious Linuteus 
placed both iu bis Order of Primates,or first 
animals, aud composed his g mus Homo, 
Man, not only of humans, homo sapiens ; 
ibut also of Chimpanzee*, homo troglo- 
•dytoa; of gibbons, hotwo lam; and of orang- 
lOutaugs, homo satyrus. Aud down to to¬ 
day the Liana- iu name “ Primates ” has s 
been retained for the ape order, not only 
by some of the foremost naturalists who, 
like Huxley, believe mau should be re¬ 
tained in it ; l>nt also by many other scien¬ 
tists who, like Geoffrey St. Hilaire, be¬ 
lieve that he should be excluded from it. 
It is to Cuvier that wo owe the terra 
Quadrumana, or four-handed, as applied to 
the order of monkeyH in contradistinction 
to Bimaua, or two-hauded, bestowed on an 
< order of wbioh Man is the only represen¬ 
tative. 
.Those among us who jocularly or scien¬ 
tifically claim a relationship of some suit 
witkilbe monkey race, as well as those who 
lightly rnr indignantly repudiate ail kin¬ 
ship of the kind, havo both defensible 
grounds for .their respective utterances. 
In favor of tin. .former it cannot be denied 
that, from a puts .auatomioal point of view, 
the points of similitude between the man 
and the monkey art too many and close to 
be easily attributed to accident. The 
skeleton of authropoid apos generally, 
consists of but few more bones than that of 
mau. The proportions of its parts, if we 
except the relative length of the limb 
bones, are also much as in man, nor are 
their shapes, except as regards the jaws 
and haunch bones, greatly different. Tho 
same general resemblance likewise holds 
true of their minute structure, though 
the osseous tissue iu the ape is generally 
deuser than iu the human, and the cavity ^ 
for the marrow in the long boueB, smaller. . 
On descending from generalities to par- 
[Entered according to Act of CongrcBB.lT^e year 1878,1* the Rural Publishing Company, In the office of the Librarian of C ongress at Washington.! -- 
♦ i rflHflmblance is less com- I is never less than 55 cubic inches in the latter, ~ The eompitfatxve intelligence of 
ticulars, however, the resemblance is less com¬ 
plete aud the structure of the monkey stows a 
decided inferiority precisely in those organs 
which assure the superiority of the human bemg 
over tho rest of creation. To the ordinary 
reader a detailed enumeration of the points of 
structural difference would be wearisome from 
its ltngtb and, without constant reference to a 
dictionary, incomprehensible from its techni¬ 
cality. To afford our readers, therefore, an in¬ 
telligible idea of the relative appearance and 
formation of man and ape, it has been thought 
best to present to them, in this connection, 
carefully drawn illustrations of a ’human skele¬ 
ton aud of that of an orang-outang, euo of tho 
.‘brutes whose structure bears the closest analogy 
to that of sovereign man. A careful comparison 
of the two will be equally interesting mod in¬ 
structive and obviate the necessity of more than 
a few explanatory remarks. 
The absolute size of the brain never iu any 
ape approaches that of the lowest type of ra¬ 
tional human beings. Thus the cranial capacity 
while in the ourang and chimpanzee it is but 26 
and 27>* oubic inches respectively. In general 
form and structure, however, the brains of man 
and monkey closely resemble each other, though 
that of the latter is considerably less convolu¬ 
ted. With this exception, and its great inferi¬ 
ority in size, the brain of the orang is a counter¬ 
part of man’s in all respects. In man the orifioe 
through which the spinal marrow oonnects with 
the brain, -is so situated as to render the head 
easily balanced - whereas in all monkeys it is so 
far back, that theca is a constant tendency of the 
head to hang forwards—one of the structural 
causes which renders it a matter of great diffi¬ 
culty for all monkeys to move freely in an up¬ 
right posture. The teeth of apas oousist, as in 
m.B | of incisors, canines, premolar* and molars, 
and generally the higher apes have the same 
number; but no ape has the teeth placed in an 
uninterrupted row in each Jaw, and from the 
prolongation of tho canines into opposite inter¬ 
spaces, they soon grow iuto tnshes. 
OBANG-OUTANd. 
“ The comparative intelligence of diffe rent 
kinds^of men is not uncommonly inferred from 
the relative size of the facial angle formed at the 
junction of two straight lines, one drawn from 
the middle of the exterior entrance of the ear 
to the base of the nose, and the other from the 
prominent center of the forehead to the most 
prominent part of the upper jaw. The more 
open this angle, the higher the estimation of the 
intelligence of the subject. Judged by this rule, 
the intelligence of the brightest species of mon¬ 
keys, is far behind that of the lowest race of hu¬ 
manity. In the skulls of nearly every class of the 
former, the face slopes backward, bo that this an¬ 
gle is always more or less acute, its size diminish¬ 
ing with the age of the animal; for in all the apes 
there is a gradual impairment of the faculties, 
and a gradual increase of all vicious qualities as 
they advance in years—phenomena that corres¬ 
pond with a growing depression in the anterior 
portion of the brain, an elongation of the face 
and a considerable diminution of the facial an¬ 
gle. However submissive and obedient in early 
life, a monkey invariably becomes mali¬ 
cious, quarrelsome, and unmistakably 
brutish in old age. 
The monkey ’b larynx greatly resembles 
that of mao. and his tongue is only a trifle 
longer, yet the power of speech is utterly 
denied to all the species, though it is not 
improbable that, like most other animals, 
they possess the faculty of communicating 
facts, to a limited extent, to each other. 
The neck of all apes is much shorter than 
that of the most apopleotio mortal, while 
in some cases the head rests almost di¬ 
rectly on the shoulders. While the ante¬ 
rior limbs, or arms, though varying con¬ 
siderably in length, are always much 
longer in proportion to the trunk, than in 
the case of man, the posterior limbs, or 
legs of apes, are shorter, and generally 
proportionately weaker than those in the 
human body. It has been well said that 
human civilization is mainly due to the 
conformation of human bauds and feet, 
and especially to the position of the thumb 
fronting the four other fingers. The 
shape of the foot enables man to stand 
firmly in an upright position, and after 
the lessons of childhood, to balance him¬ 
self unconsciously, while moving about. 
Ou the other hand, the monkey’s feet 
turn inwards, so as to enable him to 
grasp more easily and firmly, the branches 
of the trees among which he naturally 
lives; while it is only by great efforts 
ho can walk erect ou the ground. 
Though his hands have five fingers, the 
thumb is short and widely separated from 
the other fingers, and, moreover, the lat¬ 
ter are mutually dependent and cannot 
act separately like the admirable instru¬ 
ment which has enabled man to accom¬ 
plish so many marvels of iudustry and art. 
The Orang-outang is a native of Sumatra 
and Borneo. He is from four to five feet 
high, tailless, like the other anthropoid 
apes, and intellectually generally is consid¬ 
ered superior to all the monkey race. The 
adult male Gorilla is from five to six feet 
high and from seven to nine feet from the 
end of one outstretched hand to that of 
tho other. He is an inhabitant of the 
equatorial regions of Western Africa, the 
game country which furnishes the Chim¬ 
panzee, which of all the race approaches 
nearest to man in its whole config¬ 
uration. He is of about the same 
hight as the orang-outang, aud his skull is 
represented at fig. o.—p. 599 The Gibbon 
is generally considered the connecting link 
between the ape and the baboon, rarely 
exceeds tour feet iu hight; is extremely 
active among the branches of trees, is an 
inhabitant of Siam and Malacca, and has 
h head shaped as at b. His arms reach the 
ground and when extended are twice tha 
— length of the body. 
