VII
PROVISION FOR THE STUDY OF THE PRIMATES, AND ESPECIALLY THE MONKEYS AND ANTHROPOID APES[1]
[Footnote 1: Much of the material of this section was published originally in Science (Yerkes, 1916).]
I should neglect an important duty as well as waste an opportunity if in this report I did not call attention to the status of our knowledge concerning the monkeys and apes and present the urgent need of adequate provision for the comparative study of all of the primates.
Although for centuries students of nature have been keenly interested in the various primates, the information which has been accumulated is fragmentary and wholly inadequate for generally recognized scientific and practical needs. There is a voluminous literature on many aspects of the organization and lives of the monkeys and apes, but when one searches in it for reasonably connected and complete descriptions of the organisms from any biological angle, one, is certain to meet disappointment.
Concerning their external characteristics we know much; and our classifications, if not satisfactory to all, are at least eminently useful. But when one turns to the morphological sciences of anatomy, histology, embryology, and pathology, one discovers great gaps, where knowledge might reasonably be expected. Even gross anatomy has much to gain from the careful, systematic examination of these organisms. With still greater force this statement applies to the studies of finer structural relations. Little is known concerning the embryological development and life history of certain of the primates, and almost nothing concerning their pathological anatomy.
Clearly less satisfactory than our knowledge of structure is the status of information concerning those functional processes which are the special concern of physiology and pathology. Certain important experimental studies have been made on the nervous system, but rarely indeed have physiologists dealt systematically with the functions of other systems of organs. There are almost no satisfactory physiological descriptions of the monkeys, anthropoid apes, or lower primates.