malia or Plantæ; while, finally, a countryman of our own arrogates to his fellows so high a place in the aristocracy of nature as to deny that mankind can be thought of zoologically at all.
From the conception of man as a genus of Primates to the refusal to conceive of him as a subject of zoological investigation, is a wide range of opinion—so wide, indeed, as to include all possible views; for in the present state of science, no one is likely to propound the idea that man is only a species of some genus of ape. Ingenious and learned men have held all the doctrines which have been mentioned; great men have held some of them; and, therefore, it is more than probable that the question at issue, if we put the problem in this way, is in reality more one of opinion as to the right method of classification and the value of the groups which receive certain names, than one of fact. But, after all, it is the latter question which really interests science; and, therefore, it seems to me, that some service may be done by setting about the inquiry in a different way—by endeavouring, in fact, to answer the question—What is the value of the differences observed between man and the lower animals, as compared with the differences between the lower animals themselves? Are the differences between man and the apes, for example, as great as those between the ape and the fish? or are they rather comparable to those between the ape and the bird; or, to take a less range, to those between the ape and the Marsupial; or, to occupy a lower stand still, to those presented by the ape, and, say, the Pachyderm: or, after all, are the differences no greater than those which obtain between different genera of the Quadrumana?
These are questions which can plainly enough be settled independently of all theoretical views. Differences of structure can be weighed by the mind, as definitely as differences of gravity by the balance; nor can any dialectic skill refine them away. It will save trouble, if the attempt be made to answer the last question first—Are the structural differences between man and the Quadrumana no greater than those between the extreme genera of the Qnadrumana? If, as I shall endeavour to show, this question can be demonstrably answered in the affirmative;—if it can be proved beyond doubt, that whether we consider the skeleton, the muscles, the brain, or the other viscera, man is far less distant from Troglodytes or Pithecus, than these apes are from the Lemur, and still more from the Galeopithecus or the Cheiromys, the other queries will need no separate solution. I have hardly any new facts to bring forward, nor any need to advance such. Thanks to the researches of Duvernoy, Tiedemann, Isidore St. Hilaire, Schrœder van der Kolk, Vrolik, Gratiolet, Professor Owen, and others, all the elements of the problem have long since been determined. It is only necessary to range the admitted facts side by side, in order to show that there is no escape from the conclusion.
And, first, with respect to the differential characters presented by the brains of the chimpanzee and orang from that of man on the one hand, and those of the lowest quadrumana on the other. I begin with this question, because it was my misfortune, at the last meeting of the British
