In the skeleton of a male Bosjesman, in the same collection, the
proportions, by the same measurement, to the spinal column, taken as
100, are--the arm 78, the leg 110, the hand 26, and the foot 32. In a
woman of the same race the arm is 83, and the leg 120, the hand and foot
remaining the same. In a European skeleton I find the arm to be 80, the
leg 117, the hand 26, the foot 35.
Thus the leg is not so different as it looks at first sight, in its
proportion to the spine in the Gorilla and in the Man--being very
slightly shorter than the spine in the former, and between 1/10 and 1/5
longer than the spine in the latter. The foot is longer and the hand
much longer in the Gorilla; but the great difference is caused by the
arms, which are very much longer than the spine in the Gorilla, very
much shorter than the spine in the Man.
The question now arises how are the other Apes related to the Gorilla
in these respects--taking the length of the spine, measured in the same
way, at 100. In an adult Chimpanzee, the arm is only 96, the leg 90, the
hand 43, the foot 39--so that the hand and the leg depart more from the
human proportion and the arm less, while the foot is about the same as
in the Gorilla.
In the Orang, the arms are very much longer than in the Gorilla (122),
while the legs are shorter (88); the foot is longer than the hand (52
and 48), and both are much longer in proportion to the spine.
In the other man-like Apes again, the Gibbons, these proportions are
still further altered; the length of the arms being to that of the
spinal column as 19 to 11; while the legs are also a third longer than
the spinal column, so as to be longer than in Man, instead of shorter.
The hand is half as long as the spinal column, and the foot, shorter
than the hand, is about 5/11ths of the length of the spinal column.
Thus 'Hylobates' is as much longer in the arms than the Gorilla, as the
Gorilla is longer in the arms than Man; while, on the other hand, it
is as much longer in the legs than the Man, as the Man is longer in the
legs than the Gorilla, so that it contains within itself the extremest
deviations from the average length of both pairs of limbs (See the
illustration on page 196).
The Mandrill presents a middle condition, the arms and legs being nearly
equal in length, and both being shorter than the spinal column; while
hand and foot have nearly the same proportions to one another and to the
spine, as in Man.
In the Spider monkey ('Ateles') the leg is longer than the spine, and
the arm than the leg; and, finally, in that remarkable Lemurine form,
the Indri ('Lichanotus'), the leg is about as long as the spinal column,
while the arm is not more than 11/18 of its length; the hand having
rather less and the foot rather more, than one-third the length of the
spinal column.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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