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Show 12 THE DESCENT OF MAN. PART I. ()ften recurrent led to consumption. These monkeys suffered also from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, and cataract in the eye. The younger ones when shedding their milk-teeth often died from fever. 1\fedicines produced the same effect on them as on us. 1\fany kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors: they will also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure. Brehm asserts that the natives of north-eastern Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are made drunk. He has seen some of these animals, which he kept in confinement, in this state; and he gives a laughable account of their behaviour and strange grimaces. On the following morning they were very .cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands and wore a most pitiable expression: wheu beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with .disgust, but relished the juice of lemons.4 An American monkey, an Ateles, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many .men. rrhese trifling facts prove how similar the nerres <>f taste must be in monkeys and man, and how similarly their whole nervous system is affected. Man is infested with internal parasites, sometimes .causing fatal effects, a11d is plagued by external parasites, all of which belong to the same genera or families with those infesting other mammals. Man is subject like {)th.er mammal~, birds, and even insects, to that mysteriOus law, wh1ch causes certain normal processes, such .as gestation, as well as the maturation and duration of various diseases, to follow lunar periods.5 His wounds 4 Brehm, 'Thierleben,' B. i. 1864, s. 75, 8G. On the Ateles, s. 105. For other analogous statements, sees. 25, 107. 6 With respect to insects see Dr. Laycock • Ou o. General Law of Vital Periodicity,' British Association, UH2. Dr. M:acculloch, • Silli- CnAr.I. HOMOLOGICAL STRUCTURE. 13 are repaired by the same process of healing; and the· stumps left after the amputation of his limbs occasionally possess, especially during an early embryonic· period, some power of regeneration, as in the lowest animals.6 The whole process of that most important function,. the reproduction of the species, is strikingly the same iu all mammals, from the first act of courtship by the male 7 to the birth and nurturing of the young. Monkeys are born in almost as helpless a condition as onr· own infants; and in certain genera the young diffey· fully as much in appearance from 'the adults, as do our· children from their full-grown parents.8 It has been urged by some writers as an important distinction, that with man the young arrive at maturity at a much later age than with any other animal : but if we look to thoraces of mankind which inhabit tropical countries the difference is not great, for the orang is believed not to· be adult till the age of from ten to fifteen years.9 Man man's N01·th American Journal of Science,' vol. xvii. p. 305, has seen a dog suffering from tertian ague. G I have given the eviLlenee on this heacl in my 'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. p. Hi. i "Mares e diver::.is generibus Quadrumanorum sine dubio dignoscunt '' fcminas humanas a maribus. Primum, credo, odorntu, postea aspectn . '' l\Ir. Youatt, qui diu in llortis Zoologicis (Dcstiariis) mcdicus animal,, ium erat, vir in rebus obscrvandis cautus ct sagax, hoc mihi eertissimc '' probavit, et CUl'atores ejusdem loci et alii c ministris con:firmaverunt •. " :::lir Andrew Smith et Brehm notabant idem in Cynocephalo. Illus" trissimus Cuvier etiam narrut multa de hac re qu(t ut opinor nihil " hupius potest inclicari inter omnia hominibus et Quaclrumanis com'' munia. Narrat enim Cyuoccpllalum quendam in furorem incidere '' aspectu fcminarum aliquarum, sed nequaquam accendi tanto furore "ab omnibus. Semper eligebat juniorcs, et dignoscebat in turba, et '' ndvocabat voce gestuquc." s This remark is made with respect to Cynocephalus and the anthropomorphous apes by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and F. CuYier, 'Hist. Nat. <les Mammiferes,' tom. i. 18:24. !I Huxley, ';\Ian's Place in Nature,' 1863, p. 3±. |