Page:Natural History Review (1862).djvu/16

'Manus duæ, pedes bini,' therefore, is no distinctive character of man; but, nevertheless, we may quite agree with all but the two last paragraphs of the following statement by M. St. Hilaire, if for 'hands' we read "prehensile terminal limb segments":—

"Whence it follows that the existence of posterior 'hands' when there is only one pair, or of more perfect 'hands' on the posterior limbs when there are two pair, is a character common to a great number of Mammals, of very different families. A single being presents us with the inverse arrangement; and the creature which is distinguished by forming so rare and remarkable an exception, the creature which in this respect stands alone, is Man.

"And by this circumstance the views of those authors who have attributed to the human group the value of a family, and not merely of a genus, are justified still more definitely than by the character derived from the vertical attitude. In almost every other respect, man is far nearer the apes than the apes are to the lemurs, and than these are to the lowest Quadrumana. We shall even see that, under many aspects, he becomes confounded, organically, with the first mentioned. By the very characteristic conformation of his extremities, he is, on the other hand, far more distant from the apes than the latter are, not only from the lemurs and lowest Primates, but even from a great number of Marsupials.

"So that here we find on the one hand, man by himself—on the other, and separated from him by a vast interval, all the animals with hands."—(P. 208.)

In the last paragraphs here cited, M. St. Hilaire appears to us to have very greatly exaggerated the value of the deviation of the foot of man from that or the apes; for the differences between the foot of man and that of the chimpanzee, or that of the gorilla, are assuredly less than those between the foot of any Simian or Prosimian and that of Galeopithecus; and the term "vast interval" is hardly applicable to a separation which, as M. St. Hilaire expressly states, is only sufficient to justify the separation of Man as a distinct family.

M. St. Hilaire next considers the characters of the teeth of man, adverting to the well-known fact that the principal difference from the dentition of the apes lies in the shortness of the canines, and the consequent absence of that diastema, or interval between the incisors and canine in the upper jaw, and the premolars and canine in the lower jaw, which is present in the apes; and repeating the statement of Cuvier, that a similar equality and serial community of the teeth are only to be met with in the Anoplotherium. However, an approximation to these characters is found also in some of the Insectivora, animals far more closely allied to the Primates than is the fossil ungulate.

The singular peculiarities of the distribution of the hair on the human body—a distribution which is unique in the animal kingdom are next discussed; and it is shown that, in this respect even, the higher apes are more similar to man than to the lower apes. The argument which follows (sect. xi. p. 218) bears so definitely upon a question which has been largely discussed in the pages of this Review, that we must give it in full:—

"The characters derived from the equality and the contiguity of the teeth and the partial nudity of the skin are far from being as important as those which preceded them, but they are very marked: they place man, in two additional respects, in very clear opposition with the animals whose organisation most closely approaches