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EVIDENCE AS TO MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE
by Thomas H. Huxley
1863
[entire page is illustration with caption as follows]
Skeletons of the
GIBBON. ORANG. CHIMPANZEE. GORILLA. MAN.
'Photographically reduced from Diagrams of the natural size (except
that of the Gibbon, which was twice as large as nature), drawn by
Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins from specimens in the Museum of the Royal
College of Surgeons.
ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE
MAN-LIKE APES
Ancient traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern
investigation, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is
singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one,
presaging a reality. Ovid foreshadowed the discoveries of the
geologist: the Atlantis was an imagination, but Columbus found a western
world: and though the quaint forms of Centaurs and Satyrs have an
existence only in the realms of art, creatures approaching man more
nearly than they in essential structure, and yet as thoroughly brutal
as the goat's or horse's half of the mythical compound, are now not
only known, but notorious.
I have not met with any notice of one of these MAN-LIKE APES of earlier
date than that contained in Pigafetta's 'Description of the Kingdom of
Congo,'* drawn up from the notes of a Portuguese sailor, Eduardo Lopez,
and published in 1598. The tenth chapter of this work is entitled "De
Animalibus quae in hac provincia reperiuntur," and contains a brief
passage to the effect that "in the Songan country, on the banks of the
Zaire, there are multitudes of apes, which afford great delight to the
nobles by imitating human gestures." As this might apply to almost any
kind of apes, I should have thought little of it, had not the brothers
De Bry, whose engravings illustrate the work, thought fit, in their
eleventh 'Argumentum,' to figure two of these "Simiae magnatum
deliciae." So much of the plate as contains these apes is faithfully
copied in the woodcut (Fig. 1), and it will be observed that they are
tail-less, long-armed, and large-eared; and about the size of
Chimpanzees. It may be that these apes are as much figments of the
imagination of the ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged,
crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same plate; or, on the other
hand, it may be that the artists have constructed their drawings from
some essentially faithful description of a Gorilla or a Chimpanzee.
And, in either case, though these figures are worth a passing notice,
the oldest trustworthy and definite accounts of any animal of this kind
date from the 17th century, and are due to an Englishman.
[FOOTNOTE] * REGNUM CONGO: hoc est VERA DESCRIPTIO REGNI
AFRICANI QUOD TAM AB INCOLIS QUAM LUSITANIS CONGUS
APPELLATUR, per Philippum Pigafettam, olim ex Edoardo Lopez
acroamatis lingua Italica excerpta, num Latio sermone
donata ab August. Cassiod. Reinio. Iconibus et
imaginibus rerum memorabilium quasi vivis, opera et
industria Joan. Theodori et Joan. Israelis de Bry, fratrum
exornata. Francofurti, MDXCVIII.
FIG. 1.--SIMIAE MAGNATUM DELICIAE.--De Bry, 1598.
The first edition of that most amusing old book, 'Purchas his
Pilgrimage,' was published in 1613, and therein are to be found many
references to the statements of one whom Purchas terms "Andrew Battell
(my neere neighbour, dwelling at Leigh in Essex) who served under
Manuel Silvera Perera, Governor under the King of Spaine, at his city of
Saint Paul, and with him went farre into the countrey of Angola"; and
again, "my friend, Andrew Battle, who lived in the kingdom of Congo
many yeares," and who, "upon some quarell betwixt the Portugals (among
whom he was a sergeant of a band) and him, lived eight or nine moneths
in the woodes." From this weather-beaten old soldier, Purchas was
amazed to hear "of a kinde of Great Apes, if they might so bee termed,
of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature of their limmes,
with strength proportionable, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like
men and women in their whole bodily shape.* They lived on such wilde
fruits as the trees and woods yielded, and in the night time lodged on
the trees."
[footnote] *"Except this that their legges had no
calves."--[Ed. 1626.] And in a marginal note, "These great
apes are called Pongo's."
This extract is, however, less detailed and clear in its statements than
a passage in the third chapter of the second part of another
work--'Purchas his Pilgrimes,' published in 1625, by the same
author--which has been often, though hardly ever quite rightly, cited.
The chapter is entitled, "The strange adventures of Andrew Battell, of
Leigh in Essex, sent by the Portugals prisoner to Angola, who lived
there and in the adioining regions neere eighteene yeeres." And the
sixth section of this chapter is headed--"Of the Provinces of Bongo,
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