Читать книгу The Natural Food of Man. Being an attempt to prove from comparative anatomy, physiology, chemistry and hygiene, that the original, best and natural diet of man is fruit and nuts онлайн

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We observe here at once that the majority of animals having a discoidal placenta subsist chiefly upon fruits and grains, and that the typical representatives of this class, namely, those whose plactental formation is most distinctly discoidal, are also the most exclusively frugivorous.

Here, as elsewhere in nature, an exact line cannot be drawn. Transitional forms exist everywhere, and to this the placenta is no exception. The most striking accordance, however, exists between the placenta of man and that of the tailless apes—namely, the gorilla, orang, chimpanzee and gibbon. Between other discoidal species, the differentiation, though minute, is clearly marked; but between man and these apes the resemblance is so exact as to stamp them plainly as members of the same family.

The completely developed placenta is in the form of a circular disc, about eight inches broad, one inch thick and weighing about two pounds. Its manner of development is identical in the human subject and that of the above-named anthropoid apes. Its exact formation is thus described by Huxley: