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Show 114 of tlw lateral ventricle and tlw 'ltippocampus minm·' ?vlticlt cluu·actm·ise tlte ltinrl lobe of eaclt lwn~ispltm•e."-Jmu•nal of tlte P.roceediugs of tlw Linncean Society, Vol. ii, p. 19. As the essay in which this passage stands had no less ambitious an aim than the remodelling of the classification of the Mammalia, its author might be supposed to have written under a sense of peculiar responsibility, and to have tested, with especial care, the statements he ventured to promulgate. And even if this be expecting too much, hastiness, or want of opportunity for due deliberation, cannot now be pleaded in extenuation of any shortcomings ; for the propositions cited were repeated two years afterwards in the Reade Lecture, deliver~d before so grave a body as the University of Cambridge, in 1859. When the assertions, which I have italicised in the above extract, first came under my notice, I was not a little astonished at so flat a contradiction of the doctrines current among well-informed anatomists ; but, not unnaturally imagining that the deliberate statements of a responsible person must have some foundation in fact, I deemed it my duty to investigate the subject anew before the time at which it would be my business to lecture thereupon came round. The result of my inquiries was to prove that Mr. Owen's three assertions, that "the third lobe, the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus minor," are "peculiar to the genus Homo," are contrary to the plainest facts. I communicated this conclusion to the students of my class ; and then, having no desire to embark in a controversy which could not redound to the honour of British science, whatever its issue, I turned to more congenial occupations. The time speedily arrived, however, when a persistence in this reticence would have involved me in an unworthy paltering with truth. At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, in 1860, Professor Owen repeated these assertions in my presence, and, of course, I immediately gave them a direct and unqualified contradiction, pledging myself to justify that unusual procedure elsewhere. I .'~edeemed that pledge by publishing, in the January number of the Natu1·al ;~Ii~tm·y Reviem for 1861, an article wherein the truth of the three following propositions was fully demonstrated (l. c. p. 71) :- " 1. That the third lobe is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man ~eeing that it exists in all the higher quadrumana.'' "2. That the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle is neither peculiar to, 115 nor characteristic of, man, inasmuch as it also exists in the higher quadru-mana. " 3. That the hippocampus mino1• is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, as it is found in certain of the higher quadrumana." Furthermore, this paper contains the following paragraph (p. 76): "And lastly, Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik (op. cit. p. 271), though they particularly note that ' the lateral ventricle is distinguished from that of Man by the very defective proportions of the posterior cornu, wherein only a stripe is visible as an indication of the hippocampus minor;' yet the Figure 4, in their second Plate, shows that this posterior cornu is a perfectly distinct and unmistakeable structure, quite as large as it often is in Man. It is the more remarkable that Professor Owen should have overlooked the explicit statement and figure of these authors, as it is quite obvious, on comparison of the figures, that his woodcut of the brain of a Chimpanzee (I. c. p. 19) is a reduced copy of the second figure of Messrs. Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik's first Plate. "As M. Gratiolet (1. c. p. 18), however, is careful to remark, 'unfortunately the brain which they have taken as a model was greatly altered (profonclement affaisse ), whence the general form of the brain is given in these plates in a manner which is altogether incorrect.' Indeed, it is perfectly obvious, from a comparison of a section of the skull of the Chimpanzee with these figures, that such is the case ; and it is greatly to be regretted that so inadequate a figure should have been taken as a typical representation of the Chimpanzee's brain." From this time forth, the untenability of his position might have been as apparent to Professor Owen as it was to every one else ; but, so far from retracting the grave errors into which he had fallen, Professor Owen has persisted in and reiterated them ; first, in a lecture delivered before the Royal Institution on the 19th of March, 1861, which is admitted to have been accurately reproduced in the 'Athenreum' for the 23rd of the same month, in a letter addressed by Professor Owen to that journal on the 30th of March. The 'Athenreum' report was accompanied by a diagram purporting to represent a Gorilla's brain, but in reality so extraordinary a misrepresentation, that Professor Owen substantially, though not explicitly, withdraws it in the letter in question. In amending this eiTor, however, Professor Owen fell into another of much graver import, as his communication concludes with the following paragraph : "For I 2 |
