Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MANKIND. INTRODUCTION. I.—MAN'S PLACE IN CREATION. In the earliest attempt to classify animated nature Linnaeus excited no indignation, though he united Man and Apes in one order of the class of Mammalia, which he designated the Primates. In our days, however, a scientific dispute has arisen whether the human race is to be separated from the apes by the rank of an order or a sub-order, but as this is a question of the value to be attributed to the idea of orders and sub-orders in a systematic edifice, Ethnology is not called upon to join in the discussion. Richard Owen thought that he had ascertained that in man alone the cerebellum is completely eclipsed by the cerebrum, and that a decidedly superior rank was thus secured to us. But even naturalists who, with Gratiolet, oppose the doctrine of historically successive transmutations of species, have acknowledged that this assertion was founded only on erroneous observations. The distinction between man and apes, as bimanous and quadru- manous, has also been set aside by recent investigations. The tarsal bones of the gorilla resemble those of man in all important respects—in number, arrangement, and shape; only the metatarsal bones and phalanges of this animal are relatively longer and slimmer, while the hallux is not merely comparatively shorter and weaker, but, in conjunction with its metatarsal bone,.is attachedto the tarsus by a more flexible joint.1 But though the attachment of the flexors of the toes may be somewhat different in man, the prehensile foot of the ape possesses three muscles (M. peronais longus, flexor brevis, extensor brevis) which are wanting in the hand.2 Although the hinder limbs of the gorilla must therefore be recognized as genuine feet, their arrangement differs from that of our foot, and by thi...