The lower Apes depart from the Gorilla by an exaggeration
of the same character, two, three, or more, slips becoming fixed to the
long flexor tendons--or by a multiplication of the slips.--Again, the
Gorilla differs slightly from Man in the mode of interlacing of the
long flexor tendons: and the lower apes differ from the Gorilla in
exhibiting yet other, sometimes very complex, arrangements of the same
parts, and occasionally in the absence of the accessory fleshy bundle.
Throughout all these modifications it must be recollected that the foot
loses no one of its essential characters. Every Monkey and Lemur
exhibits the characteristic arrangement of tarsal bones, possesses a
short flexor and short extensor muscle, and a 'peronaeus longus'.
Varied as the proportions and appearance of the organ may be, the
terminal division of the hind limb remains, in plan and principle of
construction, a foot, and never, in those respects, can be confounded
with a hand.
Hardly any part of the bodily frame, then, could be found better
calculated to illustrate the truth that the structural differences
between Man and the highest Ape are of less value than those between
the highest and the lower Apes, than the hand or the foot, and yet,
perhaps, there is one organ the study of which enforces the same
conclusion in a still more striking manner--and that is the Brain.
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