Page:Evolution of Life (Henry Cadwalader Chapman, 1873).djvu/221

Rh the Guenons and Macaques." Prof. Huxley calls attention to the differences between the cranial capacity of different races of mankind being far greater than between the lowest Man and the highest Ape. Thus, the highest human skull measured by Morton, containing one hundred and fourteen cubic inches, compared with the lowest, containing only sixty-three cubic inches, gives us a difference of fifty-one cubic inches; while a Gorilla's skull, containing thirty-four and a half inches, compared with the lowest human skull just mentioned, gives us a difference of only twenty-nine and a half cubic inches.

Let us consider now briefly the habits and mental powers of some of the barbarous races of mankind. Among these probably stand lowest the Australians and the inhabitants of the adjoining islands, the Bushmen, the Hottentots, and some of the Negro races. The languages of these races are among the poorest known, they having no abstract words, like animal, plant, color, sound, each animal and each plant being designated by a particular name. The mind of these people is so little developed that there are no abstract ideas of which such abstract words are the corresponding expression. As quoted by Buchner, De la Gironniere says of the Ayetas of the Philippine Islands, "that they gave him the impression of being a great family of monkeys: their voice recalled the short cry of these animals, and their movements strengthened the analogy." According to Buchner, "the language of the savages of Borneo is rather a kind of warbling or croaking than a truly human mode of expression;" and Sir Emerson Tennent relates of the Veddahs of Ceylon "that they communicate among themselves almost entirely by means of signs, grimaces, guttural sounds, resembling generally very little, true words, or true language." Some of these races, as the Australians, for example, cannot count over four or five. Many barbarous tribes live in trees, eating fruits, roots, worms, flies, etc.; they