of the cervical
vertebrae, and the like, there is no doubt whatsoever as to the marked
difference between Man and the Gorilla; but there is as little, that
equally marked differences, of the very same order, obtain between the
Gorilla and the lower Apes.

The Pelvis, or bony girdle of the hips, of Man is a strikingly human
part of his organization; the expanded haunch bones affording support
for his viscera during his habitually erect posture, and giving space
for the attachment of the great muscles which enable him to assume and
to preserve that attitude. In these respects the pelvis of the Gorilla
differs very considerably from his (Fig. 15). But go no lower than the
Gibbon, and see how vastly more he differs from the Gorilla than the
latter does from Man, even in this structure. Look at the flat, narrow
haunch bones--the long and narrow passage--the coarse, outwardly curved,
ischiatic prominences on which the Gibbon habitually rests, and which
are coated by the so-called "callosities," dense patches of skin, wholly
absent in the Gorilla, in the Chimpanzee, and in the Orang, as in Man!

In the lower Monkeys and in the Lemurs the difference becomes more
striking still, the pelvis acquiring an altogether quadrupedal
character.

But now let us turn to a nobler and more characteristic organ--that
by which the human frame seems to be, and indeed is, so strongly
distinguished from all others,--I mean the skull. The differences
between a Gorilla's skull and a Man's are truly immense (Fig. 16).
In the former, the face, formed largely by the massive jaw-bones,
predominates over the brain case, or cranium proper: in the latter, the
proportions of the two are reversed. In the Man, the occipital foramen,
through which passes the great nervous cord connecting the brain with
the nerves of the body, is placed just behind the centre of the base of
the skull, which thus becomes evenly balanced in the erect posture; in
the Gorilla, it lies in the posterior third of that base. In the Man,
the surface of the skull is comparatively smooth, and the supraciliary
ridges or brow prominences usually project but little--while, in the
Gorilla, vast crests are developed upon the skull, and the brow ridges
overhang, the cavernous orbits, like great penthouses.

Sections of the skulls, however, show that some of the apparent defects
of the Gorilla's cranium arise, in fact, not so much from deficiency of
brain case as from excessive development