Diversions of a NaturalistLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
Diversions of a Naturalist
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history
Owen had maintained that the structural difference between man and
the highest apes was so great that it could only be rightly expressed
by placing man in a separate sub-class of the class "Mammalia"--the
hairy vertebrate animals which have warm blood and suckle their
young. He pointed chiefly to the large size of the brain in man, the
existence on each side of its central cavity of a little internal
swelling called the "hippocampus minor," in the fanciful language of
anatomists, and of the overlapping (within the skull) of the cerebellum
by the hinder part of the large brain-hemispheres, or cerebrum. He
called the sub-class (in which he proposed to place man alone) the
"archencephala," or that of the highest developed brains (Greek,
"archi," chief, and "encephalon," a brain), and proposed three other
sub-classes, to contain the other orders of mammals (the Gyrencephala,
Lissencephala, and Lyencephala), grouped according to three grades
of complexity of the brain. Huxley denied the justification of this
special grouping, by which man was placed in a separate and highest
sub-class apart from the apes and monkeys. He pointed out that every
bone and every part recognized by the anatomist in the higher apes is
present in man (though other mammals present no such identity with him
or them), and that there are only three little muscles belonging to
the hand and the foot which are present in man and not present in the
higher apes. He showed that the term "four-handed," or "quadrumanous,"
as applied to the apes and monkeys, is misleading, inasmuch as, though
modified in the proportions of the digits and the mobility of the
great toe, the foot of the apes has the same bones and muscles as the
foot of man, and differs in structure from their hand as the foot of
man differs from his hand, whilst the true hand of the apes agrees in
structure with the hand of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account