Zoological classification : a handy book of reference with tables of the subkingdoms, classes, orders, etc., of the animal kingdom, their characters and lists of the families and principal genera / [Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe].

  • Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Zoological classification : a handy book of reference with tables of the subkingdoms, classes, orders, etc., of the animal kingdom, their characters and lists of the families and principal genera / [Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Tbe characters peculiar to man are numerous, but mostly adaptive. Such are the tenuity of the derm or skin; the rudi- mentary hairs, except on particular parts; the comparatively small faco, even in the lowest savages, compared to the large size of the skull; and the even teeth without a break in the series. He is the only “ plantigrade biped ” known, and the only animal whose chief locomotive power is thrown on the innermost side of the foot. That man was contemporary with the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and the cave-bear can now admit of no doubt. His bones, preserved from decay by the constant dripping of water charged with carbonate of lime, have been found in many cal- careous caverns in company with those of these and other extinct animals. The Engis cavern, near Liege, has yielded a skull which, being restored, is one of the most perfect that has yet been found ; another, from the Neanderthal, is said to be the “ most brutal of all known skulls.” Yet these skulls do not differ essen- tially from one another or from modem types more than those of now existing races differ from each other. The Neanderthal skull stands, indeed, “ in capacity very nearly on a level with tbe mean of the two human extremes, and very far above the pithe- coid maximum ” {Huxley). Whatever may be said as to the unity of the species, or of the “ endless diversity of opinion ” that exists as to races, it is admitted that there is only one genus—Homo. Linnaeus, in his ‘ Fauna Suecica’ (1761), puts it at the head of his order “ Mag- nates ” [afterwards changed to Primates], under the specific name of “Homo sapiens,” with the character “Naturae regnorum Tyrannus.”