Fig. 40.—The Gorilla (Anthropopithecus gorilla).
At the west end of the portion of this gallery open to the public stands a case exhibiting many of the structural differences distinguishing the man-like Apes from Man himself; and also showing different types of human skulls and the method of measuring the same. On the adjacent screens and partitions are diagrams, photographs, and sketches illustrating hand and finger prints, and identification by means of the latter.
EAST WING.
Ground Floor.
Fossil Collection.
The ground floor of this wing consists, as on the other side of the building, of a gallery running west and east the whole length of the wing in front, of a smaller parallel gallery behind this, and leading from the latter a series of galleries running north and south. With the exception of a certain number of recent skeletons introduced for comparison, and some of the specimens of Elephants and Sirenians or Sea-Cows, the whole of this floor is occupied by the collection of the remains of animals and plants which flourished in geological periods previous to the one in which we are now living. Some of these belong to species still existing upon the earth, but the great majority are extinct. They are arranged mainly upon zoological principles, that is, the groups which are believed to have natural affinities are placed together; but within some of the great divisions thus mapped out, especially of the Invertebrata and Plants, it has been found convenient to adopt a stratigraphical or even geographical grouping, the fossils of different geological formations being kept apart, and those of the British Isles separated from those of foreign localities.
This portion of the Museum is more fully described in the special Guides[19] than is possible in the present work.
Elephants, Sea-Cows, and Extinct Mammals.
The front gallery, entered from the central hall, is devoted to Elephants and Sea-Cows, both living and extinct, and to extinct and fossil Mammals of other groups. Down the middle are placed a number of large and striking objects, of too great size to be contained in the wall-cases. The first is a nearly complete skeleton of the American Mastodon ([fig. 41]), an animal closely allied to modern Elephants, from which it is chiefly distinguished by the characters of its cheek-teeth. This is followed by a skeleton of the existing Indian Elephant (Elephas maximus), and the mounted skin of a tuskless male of the same species, brought home from India by His Majesty King Edward VII., when Prince of Wales. Further down the gallery is the skull of the extinct E. ganesa—remarkable for the immense length of its tusks—from the Siwalik Hills of India; and another of the Mammoth (E. primigenius), with huge curved tusks, in a perfect state of preservation, found in the Brick-earth at Ilford, Essex.[20] Then follow skeletons of the great extinct Irish Deer (Cervus giganteus), male and female, the former distinguished by its magnificent spreading antlers, resembling those of a Fallow Deer on a large scale.
