An introduction to the study of the anthropoid apes / by Arthur Keith.

  • Arthur Keith
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the study of the anthropoid apes / by Arthur Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    34/52 (page 30)
    MATERIAL for the study of the orang has always been more plentiful than that for the study of the chimpanzee or gorilla. Consequently the literature on this animal is the more extensive, and founded upon a wider basis of observation. Some idea of the amount of material may be obtained from the fact that within the last fifty years about seven hundred skulls have been collected for purposes of exhibition and study in museums. Skeletons and stuffed specimens are not so plentiful as skulls, but yet common enough, especially in museums, such as those of Holland and India. Living animals, too, are not unfamiliar exhibits in Europe. In the zoological garden, of Rotterdam there have been twenty specimens in the last forty years, and about an equal number in the gardens at London. In captivity they do not, as a rule, livelong, five years, perhaps, being the longest, and two months being the average length of life (Schmidt, 274a). The supply of animals has been fairly abundant, yet descriptions of the soft parts of their anatomy are very few. Perhaps the most complete are those added quite recently by Milne Edwards (258), with the assistance of colleagues, and by Fick (235), although valuable contributions to the general anatomy of the animal had previously been made by Sandifort (271), Beddard (93), and Chapman (229). The four animals dissected by Milne Edwards and Fick were full grown and the first mature adults seen in confinement in Europe. Much that is known of the anatomy of the orang is included incidentally in descriptions of the anatomy of other animals—see Vrolik (210), Giglioli (31), and Bischoff (293). The Nervous System.—As far as I am aware, the nerves of the head and trunk have never been investigated, but, on the other hand, the nerves of the extremities have been well described by Westling {287), Hoefer (140), Kollmann (150), Hepburn (45), and slightly by Fick (235, 127). The lumbar plexus has been figured by Utschneider (209), Jhering (143), and Westling (287). No description has been given of the visceral nerves. The microscopic structure and minute anatomy of the centres and tracts of the cerebro-spinal axis remain 1 Temminck gives Orang-Outan as the correct spelling; Sal. Muller, who was familiar with the Malay language, rendered it Orang-Oetan, but Orang-Outang is the form in most common use. [See, however, Dr. A. B. Meyer’s letter at the end of this chapter, p. 40.]