Man's Place in Nature, 1863 | Thomas Henry Huxley | Taylor & Francis e

ABSTRACT

Huxley was one of the first adherents to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and advanced its acceptance by scientists and the public. Man's Place in Nature was explicitly directed against Richard Owen, who had claimed that there were distinct differences between human brains and those of apes. Huxley demonstrated that ape and human brains were fundamentally similar in every anatomical detail, thus applying evolution to the human race.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

chapter |23 pages

FIGS. 3 & 4.—The ‘Pygmie’ reduced from Tyson’s figures 1 and 2, 1699.

chapter |10 pages

FIG. 10.—The Gorilla, after Wolf.

chapter |9 pages

FIG. 13.—A. Egg of the Dog, with the vitelline membrane burst, so as to give exit to the yelk, the germinal vesicle (a), and its included spot (b). B. C.D.E.F. Successive changes of the yelk indicated in the text. After Bischoff.

chapter |3 pages

FIG. 16.—Front and side views of the bony pelvis of Man, the Gorilla and Gibbon: reduced from drawings made from nature, of the same absolute length, by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins.

chapter |3 pages

FIG. 17.—Sections of the skulls of Man and various Apes, drawn so as to give the cerebral cavity the same length in each case, thereby displaying the varying

chapter |3 pages

Primates. i, incisors; c, canines canines; pm, premolars; m, molars. A line is drawn through the first molar of Man, Gorilla, Cynocephalus, and Cebus, and the grinding surface of the second molar is shown in each, its anterior and internal angle being just above the m of m

chapter |1 pages

FIG. 19.—The skeleton of the Hand and Foot of Man reduced from Dr. Carber’s drawings in Gray’s ‘Anatomy’. The hand is drawn to a larger scale than the foot. The line a a in the hand indicates the boundary between the carpus and the metacarpus; b b that between the latter and the proximal phalanges; c c marks the ends of the distal phalanges. The line a′ a′ in the foot indicates the boundary between the tarsus and metatarsus; b′ b′ marks that between the metatarsus and the proximal phalanges; and c′ c′ bounds the ends of the distal phalanges: ca, the

chapter |6 pages

calcaneum; as, the astragalus; sc, the scaphoid bone in the tarsus.

chapter |1 pages

FIG. 21.—Drawing of the internal casts of a Man’s and of a Chimpanzee’s skull, of the same absolute length, and placed in corresponding positions, A. Cerebrum; B. Cerebellum. The former drawing is taken from a cast in the Museum of the

chapter |2 pages

Royal College of Surgeons, the latter from the photograph of the cast of a Chimpanzee’s skull, which illustrates the paper by Mr. Marshall ‘On the Brain of the Chimpanzee’ in the Natural History Review for July, 1861. The sharper definition of the lower edge of the cast of the cerebral chamber in the Chimpanzee arises from the circumstance that the tentorium remained in that skull and not in the Man’s. The cast more accurately represents the brain in Chimpanzee than in the Man; and the great backward projection of the posterior lobe, of the cerebrum of the former, beyond the cerebellun, is cospicuous.

chapter |1 pages

FIG. 22.—Drawings of the cerebral hemispheres of a Man and of a Chimpanzee of the same length, in order to show the relative proportions of the parts: the former taken from a

chapter |11 pages

specimen, which Mr. Flower, Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, was good enough to dissect for me; the latter, from the photograph of a similarly dissected Chimpanzee’s brain, given in Mr. Marshall’s paper above referred to. a, posterior lobe; b, lateral ventricle; c, posterior cornu; x, the hippocampus minor.

chapter |4 pages

FIG. 23.—The skull from the cave of Engis—viewed from the right side. One half the size of nature. a glabella, b occipital protuberance, (a to b glabello-oceipital line), c auditory foramen.

chapter |8 pages

FIG. 14.—The Engis skull viewed from above (A) and in front (B.)

chapter |5 pages

FIG. 25.—The skull from the Neanderthal cavern. A. side, B. front, and C. top view. One half the natural size. The ontlines from camera lucida drawings, one half the natural size, by Mr. Busk: the details from the cast and from Dr. Fuhlrott’s photographs. a glabella; b occipital protuberance; d lambdoidal suture.

chapter |1 pages

FIG. 27.—Side and front views of the round and orthognathous skull of a Calmuck after Von Baer. One-third the natural size.

chapter |3 pages

FIG. 28.—Oblong and prognathous skull of a Negro; side and front views. One-third of the natural size.

chapter |1 pages

‘cerebral length.’ The length of the basicranial axis as to this length, or, in other words, the proportional length of the line g h to that of a b taken as 100, in the three skulls, is as follows:—Bes-ver 70 to 100; Lemur 119 to 100; Baboon 144 to 100. In an adult male Gorilla the cerebral length is as 170 to the basicrannial axis taken as 100, in the Negro (fig. 30) as 236 to 100. In the Constantinople skull (fig. 30) as 266 to 100. The cranial difference between the highest Ape’s skull and the lowest Man’s is therefore very strikingly brought out by these measurements. In the digram of the Baboon’s skull the dotted lines d d &c. give the angles

chapter |1 pages

FIG. 30.—Sections of orthognathous (light contour) and prognathous (dark contour) skulls, one-third of the natural size. a b, Basicranial axis; b c, b′ c′, plane of the occipital foramen; d d′, hinder end of the palatine bone; e e′,

chapter |2 pages

front end of the upper jaw; TT′, insertion of the tentorium.

chapter |2 pages

FIG. 31.—An Australian skull from Western Port, in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, with the contour of the Neanderthal skull. Both reduced to one-third the natural size.

chapter |2 pages

FIG. 32.—Ancient Danish skull from a tumulus at Borreby; one-third of the natural size. From a camera lucida drawing by Mr. Busk.