simiæ in the form of the cranium favorable to the maintenance
of an erect position. In a future part of this work I
shall find a more proper place for some further inquiry into
anatomical relations. It will be sufficient for the present to
observe that Hie analogy in this respect between mankind
and the simiæ, has been supposed to be very much greater
than it really is.- The skulls of the adult chimpanzé and orang
outan, differ, as Mr. Owen has clearly demonstrated, much more
from the human cranium than it has been hitherto supposed. >
• Paragraph 1.—-Gesture.
Are any of the simiæ destined for an upright posture ? This
is a question relating to physical circumstances though intimately
connected with psychical considerations.
I t is now perfectly ascertained, says M. Lesson, that the
gesture of the orangs is never agile and natural, jmle^s when
they .employ all their limbs. It' is only,, by ( aG^den^, and
often with the help of branches of which, they lqy hold, jot in
flimbing steep places, that the orangs tread-for a few moments
upon their posterior limbs ^done. By. long and repe^t^dp-
struction, they can be taught to walk, upright, but thei^.nise-
curegait and the constant habit of resting, on the touter.,.çdge
of the foot, clearly prove this position to bet veiy unnatural tp
them.*
Condemned to support his trunk by his four limbs, tfie
orang after all be a very imperfect approximation to man.
This circumstance involves an almost infinite, number of modifications
in the psychical condition of the tribe—
* The truth of this observation, which contradicts an old and prevalent notion,
has been fully proved from anatomical structure, by Mr. It. Owen, in his excellent
Memoir on the Osteology of the Chimpanzé 'and Orang, in the first volume of the
Transactions of the Zoological Society. The same fact has been established by
actual observation. M. Fred; Cuvier has given some valuable remarks on the
habits of a living orang. He says— Cet orang-outang était entièrement conforme
pour grimper et pour faire son habitation des arbres. En. effet, autant il
grimpoit avec facilité, autant il marchoit péniblement.” “ H passoit facilement d’un
arbre à un autre lorsque les branches de ces arbres se touchoient, de sorte que dans
une forêt un peu épaisse il n’y auroit eû aucune raison pour que cet animal descendît
jamais à terre, où il marchait difficilement.” Annales du Muséum, vol. xvi.
Mr. R. Owen on the Osteology of the Chimpanzé. ;
Paragraph 2.—-Family Relations and Habits.
Monkeys appear to resemble man in many of their social
habits and dispositions. In the state of nature they go in little
troops, which appear to be led b y old and experienced chiefs.
u The authority- of adults over their young is absolute, and
the former are said to maintain it by means of chastisement,”
I t is supposed that the sapajous and gibbons are monogamists,
but in all the other tribes the females are common.
The paternal affection is however remarkably strong in the
monkey tribe. The females of the chimpanze watch their off-
spritig during two complete years, with the most tender solicitude/'
and the young apes are so strongly attached to their
mothers, that if the latter are killed, they can hardly be separated
from the bodies. Instances have been known evincing
a degree of maternal Love not exceeded in the human species.
A female' o ff b e simia entellus has been seen,, when feeling
herself mortally wounded, to collect all her strength, and in a
dying effort to place her young in a state of security.*
Paragraph Use of Speech.
Thé use of articulate language has always been regarded as
one of the most remarkable endowments of mankind. The
universality of its existence among men is not a less striking
fact than its total absence among brutes, even among those
whieh are nearest to man, and in whose organization nothing
has been discovered that precludes the endowment of speech.
We may account for the fact, that there is no tribe of men
without speech, by supposing language to have been handed
down from one original to various branches of the human
family. But contingencies may have occurred, and, we are
apt to think, must have happened in a long course of ages, and
amidst the wanderings of a scanty population over previously
untrodden wildernesses, fitted to interrupt the traditional preservation
of this acquirement. How many stories have been
* Lesson, Hist. Nat. tom. iii. p. 248.