APATITE, a translucent but seldom transparent mineral. It passes through various shades of color, from white to yellow, green, blue, and occasionally red. It is now largely utilized as a source of artificial phosphate manures.
APE, a common name of a number of quadrumanous animals inhabiting the Old World (Asia and the Asiatic islands, and Africa). and including a variety of species. The family includes the chim panzee, gorilla, orang-outang, etc., and has been divided into three genera, trog lodytes, simia, and hylobates.
The highest and most man-like mon keys, including gorilla, chimpanzee, orang-outang, gibbon, and several other species, are called Anthropoid Apes, They are all arboreal, and inhabit Africa, southeastern Asia, and the Malay Archi pelago. In all, about a dozen species have been described with more or less definiteness. It is recognized by anato mists that all the attempts to establish a fundamental distinction, on anatomical grounds, between the physical structure of the higher apes and that of man are futile. Generic differences, indeed, there are in abundance, but these establish only a difference of degree, and not of kind. Thus, in man, the great toe is not opposable to the others for grasping purposes, the angle between the face and the top of the skull does not exceed 120°, the teeth form an uninterrupted series, and so on; while the strong spines on the back of the gorilla's neck, the very marked eyebrow ridges in gorilla and chimpanzee, the especially long arms of the gibbon, and the protruding jaws of all of the anthropoids, are equally characteristic adaptations to different ways of life. The difference of structure
between the lowest monkeys and the higher are far greater than those be tween man and any anthropoid ape.
On the other hand, while it is im possible to establish any fundamental distinction in physical structure between homo and the anthropomorpha, there is among evolutionists an equal consensus of opinion as to the impossibility of re garding an ape of any existing anthro poid species as in the direct line of human ancestry. As regards brain structure, the most man-like ape is the orang, while the chimpanzee has the most closely related skull, the gorilla the most human feet and hands, the gibbon the most similar chest.