ety a paper "On the Characters, Principles of Division,
and Primary Groups of the Class Mammalia," which was printed in the
Society's Journal, and contains the following passage:--"In Man,
the brain presents an ascensive step in development, higher and
more strongly marked than that by which the preceding sub-class
was distinguished from the one below it. Not only do the cerebral
hemispheres overlap and the olfactory lobes and cerebellum, but they
extend in advance of the one and further back than the other. The
posterior development is so marked, that anatomists have assigned to
that part the character of a third lobe; 'it is peculiar to the
genus Homo, and equally peculiar is the posterior horn of the lateral
ventricle and the 'hippocampus minor,' which characterise the hind
lobe of each hemisphere'."--'Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean
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, delivered
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 "pecular 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 arrive