Page:Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature.djvu/143

Rh présents à la'séance. La seul doute qui soit resté se rapporte au pes Hippocampi minor.… A l'état frais l'indice du petit pied d'Hippocampe était plus prononcé que maintenant."

Professor Owen repeated his erroneous assertions at the meeting of the British Association in 1861, and again, without any obvious necessity, and without adducing a single new fact or new argument, or being able in any way to meet the crushing evidence from original dissections of numerous Apes' brains, which had in the meanwhile been brought forward by Prof. Rolleston, F.R.S., Mr. Marshall, F.R.S., Mr. Flower, Mr. Turner and myself, revived the subject at the Cambridge meeting of the same body in 1862. Not content with the tolerably vigorous repudiation which these unprecedented proceedings met with in Section D, Professor Owen sanctioned the publication of a version of his own statements, accompanied by a strange misrepresentation of mine (as may be seen by comparison of the 'Times' Report of the discussion), in the 'Medical Times' for October 11th, 1863. I subjoin the conclusion of my reply in the same journal for October 25th.

"If this were a question of opinion, or a question of interpretation of parts or of terms,—were it even a question of observation in which the testimony of my own senses alone was pitted against that of another person, I should adopt a very different tone in discussing this matter. I should, in all humility, admit the likelihood of having myself erred in judgment, failed in knowledge, or been blinded by prejudice.

"But no one pretends now that the controversy is one of terms or of opinions. Novel and devoid of authority as some of Professor Owen's proposed definitions may have been, they might be accepted without changing the great features of the case. Hence, though special investigations into these matters have been undertaken during the last two years by Dr. Allen Thomson, by Dr. Rolleston,