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In the remarkable paper read by Professor Busk before the Ethnological Society, that eminent physiologist proved that the Asiatic apes, typified by the ourang-outang, are brachycephalic, like the Mongolians amongst whom they live, or who live amongst them; whilst the gorillas and the African anthropoids are dolichocephalic as the negroes.
Let us explain: Naturalists consider man to be no more than a unique species of the order bimana, established by Dumeril in his Analytic Zoology, page 16; and Bory de Saint Vincent thinks that the ourang-outang ought to be included in the same order if we would make the species complete.
Several years ago I was much struck with a remark, nearly to the above effect, published by Mr. Waterhouse. I infer also from an observation made by Professor Owen, with respect to the length of the arms of the ourang-outang, that he has come to a nearly similar conclusion.
Sometimes the hairy anomalies are but instances of naevus pilosus. The Indian ourang-outang woman examined at the office of the Lancet was an example of this kind. Hebra, Hildebrandt, Jablokoff, and Klein describe similar cases. Many of the older "wild men" were individuals bearing extensive hairy moles.
He succeeded in landing many miles below, on the eastern bank, but he was so bruised, that for many days he was unable to move. One day a report was spread in the neighbourhood of Port Gibson, that a strange monster, of the ourang-outang species, had penetrated the canebrakes upon the western banks of the Mississippi.
I infer also from an observation made by Professor Owen, with respect to the length of the arms of the ourang-outang, that he has come to a nearly similar conclusion. It is hopeless to attempt to convince any one of the truth of this proposition without giving the long array of facts which I have collected, and which cannot possibly be here introduced.
"It's too dark to see well," he said to himself, "and this thing bounces like a tugboat in a gale, but if that ourang-outang wasn't standing under that gaslight yonder, I'll be hanged!" Mr. O'Royster's was the sort of mind that dwelt lightly and briefly on subjects affecting it disagreeably, and long before he reached the club it had left the ourang-outang far in the distance.
No plant has ever been found in a state of transition from a lower to a higher form; no instance has ever been produced of one of the algæ being transmuted into the lowest form of terrestrial vegetation; nor of a small gelatinous body developing itself into a fish, a bird, or a beast; nor of an ourang-outang rising into a man.
At first sight of the brute, notwithstanding its strangely monstrous appearance, Henry had really mistaken it for a man; but a moment's reflection convinced him that he was looking upon an ape instead of a man, and one of such gigantic size as to make him certain it must be the animal spoken of by Saloo under the various appellations of mias rombi, ourang-outang, and red gorilla.
The idea behind the announcement is not that we shall go to see the play in a spirit of curiosity, as if it had been written by an ourang-outang, but that we shall go to see it in a spirit of flunkeyism, as if it had been written by a demi-god. We are conceived sitting in hushed wonder that a visitor from realms far above our experience should stoop down to amuse us.
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