Part 7 (1/2)
Falkenstein has given a detailed description of a gorilla which was re
”He would take a cup or glass with the greatest care, using both hands to carry it to hisit down so carefully that I do not reh hih we had never tried to teach hi him to Europe as nearly in his natural condition as possible”
These and a multitude of similar observations which have been made since Huxley wrote are typical of the increase of our knowledge on the habits and capacities of the anthropoid apes They all serve to show that in the hich they are surrounded, and their ireat The iureat The difference between the instincts of the lower anience of e extent fixed and mechanical The proper perforht external conditions for its accomplishment In the absence of these conditions, the call to perforreat, and results in useless perforher anieneral in their character, and are supple aptitude for modification of instinctive action to suit varieties of surrounding circuence becomes more and more developed, the blind, e nuiven of such instincts ence The chief factors in producing the change are, as has been shewn by Professor Groos, the possession of a general instinct to imitate and to experiment, and the existence of a period of youth in which the young creature may practise these instincts, and so prepare itself for the more serious purposes of adult life The anthropoid apes seereater than that observed in any other class of ani period of youth, they have the opportunity of putting them into practice to the fullest possible extent
From the natural history of the anthropoid apes, Huxley passed to consideration of their relation tothe utility of the enquiry, a passage necessary enough in these days of prejudice, but now chiefly with historical interest:
”It will be ade of man's position in the animate world is an indispensable preli of his relations to the universe; and this again resolves itself in the long run into an enquiry into the nature and the closeness of the ties which connect hiular creatures whose history has been sketched in the preceding pages
”The importance of such an enquiry is, indeed, intuitively ht face to face with these blurred copies of hihtful of men is conscious of a certain shock; due perhaps not socaricature, as to the awakening of a sudden and profound ly rooted prejudices regarding his own position in nature, and his relations to the underworld of life; while that which reuht with the deepest consequences, for all who are acquainted with the recent progress of the anatoical sciences”
Huxley then proceeded to elaborate the argument from development for the essential identity of ument has now becoained additional support froe, and as it has been used in every work on evolution since Huxley first laid stress on it The adult fores, and the series of changes passed through in attaining the adult condition ical history of the ani as an exaenerally, and as it had been worked out in detail by a set of investigators The dog, like all vertebrate ani; and this body is just as h, in the case of the dog, there is not the accu of the hen into its enormous size Since Huxley wrote, it has been shewn clearly that aradual reduction in the size of the egg The ancestors of the s, like those of birds or reptiles; and there still exist two strange mammalian creatures, the Ornithorhynchus and Echidna of Australia, which lay large, reptilian-like eggs The ancestors of s within the body until they were hatched; and, as a result of this, certain structures which grow out fro and become applied to the inner wall of the porous shell for the purpose of obtaining air, got their supply of oxygen, not from the outer air, but from the blood-vessels of the maternal tissues When this connection (called the placenta) between e-shell becaen but food-material was obtained from the blood-vessels of the s to be provided with a large supply of food-yolk A marsupial animals, which, on the whole, represent a lower type of mammalian structure than ordinary mammals, there is more food-yolk than in ordinary, monkey, and g; the egg is of minute size, and the embryo obtainsof the mammal divides into a number of cells, which form a hollow sphere; on the upper surface of this the developins with the formation of a depression which indicates the futureof the nervous systeelatinous material, the foundation of the vertebral coluradually pinched off fro the details of this process, Huxley proceeded as follows:
”The history of the develop or fish, tells the sa the sag always undergoes division, or segmentation, as it is often called; the ultianiroove, in the floor of which a notochord is developed Further of all these animals resemble one another, not merely in outward form, but in all essentials of structure, so closely, that the differences between them are inconsiderable, while in their subsequent course they diverge eneral law, that, the more closely any anier and the more intimately do their embryos resemble one another; so that, for example, the eer than do those of a snake and of a bird; and the e and of a cat reer period than do those of a dog and a bird; or of a dog and an opossueneral rule, that the longer the paths of embryonic development of two animals keep identical the more nearly the two animals are related, when Huxley wrote, was founded on a much smaller number of facts than now are known Since 1860 an enoration has been published, and the total result has been to confirm Huxley's position in the fullest possible way A certain number of exceptions have been found, but these exceptions are so obviously special adaptations to special circueneral truth of the proposition more clear
The most common kind of exception occurs when two closely related animals live under very different conditions For instance, many marine animals have close allies that in comparatively recent times have taken to live in fresh water The conditions of life in fresh water are very different, especially for delicate creatures susceptible to rapid changes of te currents Thus most of the allies of the fresh-water crayfish, which live in the sea, lay eggs from which there are soon hatched ly unlike the adult In the comparatively equable te currents, these small larvae, as Huxley shewed later in his volu their own food, and by a series of slow transforradually acquire the adult form In fresh water, however, the delicate larvae would be unable to live, and the mode of development is different The series of slow transformations is condensed, and takes place al occurs, the young crayfish is exceedingly like the adult Apart from such special cases, it is true that the study of development affords a clear test of closeness of structural affinity
Huxley then proceeds to discuss the developinate in a totally different way fro those who assert him to have no place in nature, and no real affinity with the loorld of anierressive modifications, depend on the same contrivances for protection and nutrition, and finally enter the world by the help of the same mechanism? The reply is not doubtful for a moment, and has not been doubtful any tiin, and the early stages of the development of man are identical with those of animals immediately below him in the scale; without doubt, in these respects, he is far nearer the apes than the apes are to the dog”
Then, on lines hich, by continuous repetition and expansion by authors subsequent to hie, the development of man with that of other animals, and shewed, first, its essential similarity, and then that in every case where it departed fro it resembled more closely the development of the ape He went on to review the anatomy of man:
”Thus, identical in the physical processes by which he originates,--identical, in the early stages of his formation--identical in the mode of his nutrition before and after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below him in the scale,--Man, if his adult and perfect structure be coht be expected, a anisation He resembles them as they resemble one another--he differs froh these differences cannot be weighed and measured, their valueafforded and expressed by the systeists”
Having explained the general systeical classification, he tried to dispel preli his readers or bearers to take an outside view of themselves
”Let us endeavour for aselves froine ourselves scientific Saturnians, if you will, fairly acquainted with such ani the relations they bear to a new and singular 'erect and featherless biped,'
which so the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, ree upon placing hi the mammalian vertebrates; and his lower jaw, histhe syste those estation by means of a placenta, or what are called the placental mammals
”Further, thethe orders of placental mammals, neither the whales, nor the hoofed creatures, nor the sloths and ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous cats, dogs, and bears, still less the rodent rats and rabbits, or the insectivorous s, or the bats, could claim our _homo_ as one of themselves
”There would remain, then, but one order for co that word in its broadest sense), and the question for discussion would narrow itself to this--Is Man so different from any of these apes that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another,--and hencehappily free froinary personal interest in the results of the enquiry thus set afoot, we should proceed to weigh the arguments on one side and on the other, with as much judicial calmness as if the question related to a new opossu either to nify or diminish them, all the characters by which our new mammal differed from the apes; and if we found that these were of less structural value than those which distinguish certain members of the ape order from others universally admitted to be of the same order, we should undoubtedly place the newly discovered tellurian genus with theorilla as the type for immediate comparison with man, he passed in review the various anato that in every case orilla than that differed from other anthropoids We shall take a few exa our readers, however, that Huxley carried his comparisons into every important part of the anatomical structure
There is no part of the skeleton so characteristically huirdle of the hips The expanded haunch-bones form a basin-like structure which affords support to the soft internal viscera during the habitually upright position, and gives space for the attache muscles which help orilla this region differs considerably from that in man The haunch-bones are narrower and much shallower, so that they do not for basin; they have ibbon, however, differs orilla than that differs from man The haunch-bones are flat and narrow, and totally devoid of any basin-like for and narrow, and the ischia have outwardly curved prominences, which, in life, are coated by callosities on which the animal habitually rests, and which are coarse, corn-like patches of skin wholly absent in the gorilla, in the chi, and in man
In the characters of the hands, the feet, and the brain, certain real or supposed structural distinctions between man and the apes had been relied upon
”Man has been defined as the only ani his fore-li his hind-limbs, while it has been said that all the apes possess four hands; and he has been affirmed to differ fundamentally from all the apes in the characters of his brain, which alone, it has been strangely asserted and reasserted, exhibits the structures known to anatomists as the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocaained general acceptance is not surprising--indeed, at first sight, appearances are much in its favour; but, as for the second, one can only ad that it is an innovation which is not only opposed to generally and justly accepted doctrines, but which is directly negatived by the testiated the matter; and that it has neither been, nor can be, supported by a single anatomical preparation It would, in fact, be unworthy of serious refutation except for the general and natural belief that deliberate and reiterated assertions must have some foundation”