Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/108

98 general paralysis of the insane," at different periods the actions and behavior of the unfortunate patient become horribly monkey-like. The continuous chattering, the restless clawing movements, and the stage at which the food is seized and crammed into the mouth, and, too, the half-childish, half-monkey-like gibes and smiles which wreath the poor wretch's features as he pours his grandiose ideas into the listeners' ears, create a sickening impression for the observer to think upon.

A little more old lore concerning apes and man, including a little recapitulation.

Man compares with the anthropomorphous apes in that the relative weight of a Bushman's brain compared with that, say, of an ordinary gorilla is only as three to two. The furrows and convolutions are really the same in both, and the ape does possess a hippocampus minor. The anthropomorphous apes possess, as do men, five molars; this of course includes the bicuspids with the molars. Even a prehensile toe is not unknown as a human attribute—i. e., the tendency to oppose the big toe to the others. In the gorilla especially the contrast between hand and foot is nearly as distinct as in man. Then again there is the discoidal placenta with, as in the chimpanzee, its two umbilical arteries and one umbilical vein. It is to be noted that the anthropomorphous apes differ far more from the lower apes than do they from man. Lucia and others have said much regarding the fact that the ape as he grows becomes more bestial, and man more human.

Man's descent from the ape is not direct; apart from this, the laws of heredity forbid the retrogression of the one species to any great extent, or the exaltment of the other. Man's kinship, however, is not upset by the bestial strength of the teeth of the ape, or by the enormous protuberances on the skulls of this animal. The embryonic and youthful skull of the ape exhibits a plastic and well-formed cranium. Later, in form and character, it strikes out into a divergent and disastrous path.

Two of the supposed great distinctive marks of division between plants and animals are now disproved. Cellulose was believed to be found alone in vegetable tissue, but now starch, chlorophyll, and cellulose are known to occur in the lower types of the animal kingdom. Animals were supposed to subsist only upon ready-made organic material, while plants were known to be able to convert inorganic into organic material. This partition wall has also been overthrown.

Stinging and prickly plants may be fairly said to possess and use weapons of defense. The sensitive plant, too, in a timid manner resists to the last the attacks of its attackers, and I am convinced that it appreciates the current from an electric machine. I have tried to reason with myself that my observations have