as Tiedemann, Cuvier, Serres, Leuret, Wagner, Schroeder van der Kolk, Vrolik, Gratiolet, and others.
At a late meeting of the British Association (1862), Professor Owen read a paper 'On the brain and limb characters of the Gorilla as contrasted with those of Man,'[1] in which, without alluding to the disclaimer by the Dutch anatomists of their defective plates, now so widely circulated in England, he observes, that in the gorilla the cerebrum 'extends over the cerebellum, not beyond it.' This statement, although slightly at variance with one published the year before (1861) by Professor Huxley, who maintains that it does project beyond, is interesting as correcting the description of the same brain given by Professor Owen in that year, in a lecture to the Royal Institution, in which a considerable part of the cerebellum of the gorilla was represented as uncovered.[2] In the same memoir, it is remarked, that in the Maimon Baboon the cerebrum not only covers but 'extends backwards even beyond the cerebellum.'[3] This baboon, therefore, possesses a posterior lobe, according to every description yet given of such a lobe, including a new definition of the same lately proposed by Professor Owen. For the posterior lobe was formerly considered to be that part of the cerebrum which covers the cerebellum, whereas Professor Owen defines it as that part which covers the posterior third of the cerebellum, and extends beyond it.[4]
We may, therefore, consider the attempt to distinguish the brain of Man from that of the ape on the ground of newly-discovered cerebral characters, presenting differences in kind, as virtually abandoned by its originator, and if the
- ↑ Medical Times and Gazette, October 1862, p. 373.
- ↑ Athenæum Journal Report of Royal Institution, Lecture, March 23, 1861, and reference to it by Professor Owen as to Gorilla, ibid. March 30, p. 434.
- ↑ For Report of Professor Owen's Cambridge British Association Paper, see Medical Times, October 11, 1862, p. 373.
- ↑ Annals, ibid. p. 457.
