I do not think that any valid objections can be raised as to the accuracy of the statements already cited; but in case such should be brought forward, I will now produce one authority which I am sure Professor Owen will regard as irrefragable. This is the third volume of the Catalogue of the Hunterian Collection, where, at p. 34, I find the following passages:—
"1338. The brain of a baboon (Papio mormon, Cuv.) The cerebral hemispheres are of greater proportionate size than in any of the preceding specimens, and they are developed so far backwards as to cover the cerebellum. The posterior lobes exhibit anfractuosities characteristic of the brain in the higher simiæ, as the baboons and orangs.
"1338a. The brain of a chimpanzee (Simia troglodytes, Linn.) This brain, in the relative proportions of the different parts, and the disposition of the convolutions, especially those of the posterior lobes, approaches nearest to the human brain. It differs chiefly in the flatness of the hemispheres, in the comparative shortness of the posterior, and the narrowness of the anterior lobes."
In the year 1842, Dr. Macartney read a paper "On the Minute Structure of the Brain of the Chimpanzee, and of the Human Idiot, compared with the perfect Brain of Man," before the Royal Irish Academy; and the essay, accompanied by two plates, is published in the 19th volume of the Transactions of that Academy. At p. 323, Dr. Macartney says—"The proportions of the cerebellum to the cerebrum were exactly as in man." "The parts in the lateral ventricles corresponded very nearly with the same in man." The figure of the upper surface of a plaster cast of the brain of this Chimpanzee, in Plate I., distinctly exhibits the posterior cerebral lobes projecting beyond the cerebellum.
The "Verhandelingen over de Natuurlijke Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche overseesche Bezittingen," pp. 39–44, contains a valuable memoir,[1] 4 by Dr. Sandifort, on the anatomy of the orang, in which, at p. 30, I find the following distinct statement:—
"The base of the brain is divided into three lobes (lobi), of which the most anterior is short; the middle one descends remarkably below the foremost and hindmost; while the hindermost not only covers the cerebellum, but extends still further backwards than it. In vertical sections of the skulls of full-grown specimens, the bony framework showed that such is always the case, so the cerebral lobes appear to extend more backward over the cerebellum as age advances. In the brain investigated by Tiedemann, which belonged to a young orang, the cerebral lobes covered the cerebellum, but did not extend further back than it."
Vrolik, in the valuable article, "Quadrumana," contributed by him to "Todd's Cyclopædia" (1847), expressly affirms (p. 207), that, in the orang, the cerebral hemispheres "are protracted behind the cerebellum." And M. Isidore Geoffroy S. Hilaire ("Seeonde Mémoire sur les Singes Americanes," Archives du Musèum, 1844) draws particular attention to the fact, that in the Saimiri, Chrysothrix (Saimiris, I. G. St. H.) ustus, a platyrhine monkey, and therefore far more distant from man than the
- ↑ "Ontleedkundige Veschouwing van een Volwassen Orang oetan (Simia satyrus, Linn.), van het Mannelijk Geslacht."
