HKB
(* Professor Huxley, ibid.)
After dwelling on some points of anatomical detail, highly important, but for which I have not space here, the Professor continues--"Throughout all these modifications, it must be recollected that the foot loses no one of its essential characters. Every monkey and lemur exhibits the characteristic arrangement of tarsal bones, possesses a short flexor and short extensor muscle, and a peronaeus longus. Varied as the proportions and appearance of the organ may be, the terminal division of the hind-limb remains in plan and principle of construction a foot, and never in the least degree approaches a hand."*
(* Ibid.)
For these reasons, Professor Huxley rejects the term "Quadrumana," as leading to serious misconception, and regards Man as one of the families of the Primates. This method of classification he shows to be equally borne out by an appeal to another character on which so much reliance has always been placed in classification, as affording in the mammalia the most trustworthy indications of affinity, namely, the dentition.
"The number of teeth in the Gorilla and all the Old World monkeys, except the lemurs, is thirty-two, the same as in Man, and the general pattern of their crowns the same. But besides other distinctions, the canines in all but Man project in the upper or lower jaws almost like tusks. But all the American apes have four more teeth in their permanent set, or thirty-six in all, so that they differ in this respect more from the Old World apes than do these last from Man."
If therefore, by reference to this character, we place Man in a separate order, we must make several orders for the apes, monkeys, and lemurs, and so, in regard to the structure of the hands and feet before alluded to, "the Gorilla differs far more from some of the quadrumana than he differs from Man." Indeed, Professor Huxley contends that there is more difference between the hand and foot of the Gorilla and those of the Orang, one of the anthropomorphous apes, than between those of the Gorilla and Man, for "the thumb of the Orang differs by its shortness and by the absence of any special long flexor muscle from that of the Gorilla more than it differs from that of Man." The carpus also of the Orang, like that of most lower apes, contains nine bones, while in the Gorilla, as in Man and the Chimpanzee, there are only eight." Other characters are also given to show that the Orang's foot separates it more widely from the Gorilla than that of the Gorilla separates that ape from Man. In some of the lower apes, the divergence from the human type of hand and foot, as well as from those of the Gorilla, is still greater, as, for example, in the spider-monkey and marmoset."*
(* Huxley, ibid. page 29.)
If the muscles, viscera, or any other part of the animal fabric, including the brain, be compared, the results are declared to be similar.
WHETHER THE STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN ENTITLES MAN TO FORM A DISTINCT SUB-CLASS OF THE MAMMALIA.
In consequence of these and many other zoological considerations, the order Bimana had already been declared, in 1856, by Isidore G. St. Hilaire in his history of the science above quoted "to have become obsolete," even though sanctioned by the great names of Blumenbach and Cuvier. But in opposition to the new views Professor Owen announced, the year after the publication of G. St. Hilaire's work, that he had been led by purely anatomical considerations to separate Man from the other Primates and from the mammalia generally as a distinct SUB-CLASS, thus departing farther from the classification of Blumenbach and Cuvier than they had ventured to do from that of Linnaeus.