In all, the nostrils have a narrow partition and look downwards as in man. The arms are always longer than the legs, the difference being greatest in the orang and least in the chimpanzee. We know now that in the lower races of man, the arms are proportionately longer than in higher races, and it has recently been shewn that, although there is a general proportion between the length of the long bones and the height of the whole body in man, so that the height may be calculated with an average error from these bones, yet the probable error is greater when the calculation is made from the arms than when it is made from the legs. In fact, the length of arm as compared to the length of leg and to whole height is a more variable feature in man than the length of leg.
In all the anthropoids, the forelimbs end in hands with longer or shorter thumbs, and the great toe, always smaller than in man, is far more movable and can be opposed like a thumb to the other toes. Since Huxley wrote, a considerable amount of evidence has been collected shewing that partial opposability of the toe in man is not uncommon, and that there is evidence as to a tendency to increase of length of the great toe within historical times. None of the great apes have tails, and none of them have the cheek pouches common among lower monkeys.
Huxley then gives an account of the natural history of these animals, an account which still remains the best in literature. He sums up the habits of the Asiatic forms as follows:
1. They may readily move along the ground in the erect, or semi-erect position, and without direct support from the arms.
2. They may possess an extremely loud voice, so loud as to be readily heard one or two miles.
3. They may be capable of great viciousness and violence when irritated; and this is especially true of adult males.
He finds the same general characters in the case of the gorilla and chimpanzee, but in their case there was not quite so reliable evidence upon which to go.
Although, since Huxley wrote, there has been much greater opportunity of studying anthropoid apes, both in confinement and in their native haunts, there is not much to add to his account. Some little time ago, the world was interested by the assertion of a clever American that he had discovered a kind of language used by the higher apes, and that he was able to communicate with them. Mr. Garnier, the person in question, declared his intention of going out to tropical Africa and establishing himself in a strong cage in the forests inhabited by gorillas and chimpanzees, in the hope that, impelled by curiosity, they would look upon him as we look on monkeys in a zoölogical garden, and that he would thus be able to make his knowledge and records of monkey language more perfect. As a matter of fact he went to Africa, and on his return published a volume which aroused the indignation of naturalists. There was internal evidence that he had gone no further than the garden of a coast station, and his pretended account of the habits of monkeys as they lived in their native haunts contained nothing that was not already known. There is no doubt but that the anthropoid apes, like many other animals, use modulations of their voice to express emotional states; that, in fact, they have love-cries and cries of warning, of alarm, and of pleasure; but there is not the smallest evidence to suppose that in the case of the anthropoids these cries approach more nearly to speech than the cries of any other of the higher mammals.