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Lectures and Essays by Thomas Henry Huxley
page 331 of 524 (63%)
covers over and overlaps the cast of the cerebellar chamber,
representing the cerebellum, as it does in the man (Figure 20). A
careless observer, forgetting that a soft structure like the brain loses
its proper shape the moment it is taken out of the skull, may indeed
mistake the uncovered condition of the cerebellum of an extracted and
distorted brain for the natural relations of the parts; but his error
must become patent even to himself if he try to replace the brain within
the cranial chamber. To suppose that the cerebellum of an ape is
naturally uncovered behind is a miscomprehension comparable only to that
of one who should imagine that a man's lungs always occupy but a small
portion of the thoracic cavity--because they do so when the chest is
opened, and their elasticity is no longer neutralized by the pressure of
the air.

And the error is the less excusable, as it must become apparent to every
one who examines a section of the skull of any ape above a Lemur,
without taking the trouble to make a cast of it. For there is a very
marked groove in every such skull, as in the human skull--which
indicates the line of attachment of what is termed the 'tentorium'--a
sort of parchment-like shelf, or partition, which, in the recent state,
is interposed between the cerebrum and cerebellum, and prevents the
former from pressing upon the latter. (See Figure 16.)

This groove, therefore, indicates the line of separation between that
part of the cranial cavity which contains the cerebrum, and that which
contains the cerebellum; and as the brain exactly fills the cavity of
the skull, it is obvious that the relations of these two parts of the
cranial cavity at once informs us of the relations of their contents.
Now in man, in all the old-world, and in all the new-world Simiae, with
one exception, when the face is directed forwards, this line of
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