Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And WorkMitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Science
Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work
Mitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895
"the remarkable circumstance that though, so far as our present
knowledge extends, there _is_ one structural break in the series
of forms of simian brains, this hiatus does not lie between man
and the man-like apes, but between the lower and the lowest
simians; or, in other words, between the old-and new-world apes
and monkeys, and the lemurs. Every lemur which has yet been
examined, in fact, has its cerebellum partially visible from
above, and its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior cornu
and hippocampus minor, more or less rudimentary. Every marmoset,
American monkey, old-world monkey, baboon, or man-like ape, on
the contrary, has its cerebellum entirely hidden, posteriorly, by
the cerebral lobes, and possesses a large posterior cornu, with a
well-developed hippocampus minor." ... "So far from the posterior
lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor being
structures peculiar to, and characteristic of man, as they have
over and over again been asserted to be, even after the
publication of the clearest demonstration of the reverse, it is
precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral
characters common to man with the apes. They are among the most
distinctly simian peculiarities which the human organism
exhibits." ... "Man differs from the chimpanzee or the orang, so
far as cerebral structure goes, less than these do from the
monkeys, and the difference between the brains of the chimpanzee
and of man is almost insignificant, when compared with that
between the chimpanzee brain and that of a lemur."
Although Huxley found no structural differences between the brains of
man and of anthropoid apes, he was careful to lay great stress on the
important difference in size and weight. A full-grown gorilla is
nearly twice as heavy as a European woman, and yet the heaviest known
gorilla brain probably does not exceed twenty ounces in weight, while
healthy adult human brains probably never weigh less than thirty-one
or thirty-two ounces. This difference is not of systematic importance;
for cranial capacities shew that relatively and absolutely there is a
greater difference in brain-weight between the lowest and highest
human beings than there is between the highest ape and the lowest
human being.
In dealing with the suggestion that man differs from the apes in being
bimanous, while the apes are quadrumanous, Huxley first explained and
discussed what the exact differences between hands and feet are. He
shewed that in man the foot is absolutely distinguished from the hand
by three structural points, although the two organs are similar in
general ground-plan. These structural points are:
1. The arrangement of the tarsal bones.
2. The possession of a short flexor and short extensor muscle of the
digits.
3. The possession of a muscle named _peronæus longus_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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