64 



APPENDIX B. 



N 



ON THE OKANG, CHIMPANZEE, AND GORILLA, 



With reference to the ' Transmutation of /Species.' 



FOR about two centuries, naturalists Lave been cognizant of a 

 small ape, tailless, without cheek-pouches, and without the ischial 

 callosities, clothed with black hair, with a facial angle of about GO , 

 and of a physiognomy milder and more human-like than in the 

 ordinary race of monkeys, less capricious, less impulsive in its, 

 habits, more staid and docile. This species, brought from the West 

 Coast of Africa, is that which our anatomist, Tyson, dissected : he 

 described the main features of its organisation in his work pub- 

 lished in 1699 1 . He called it the Homo /Sylvestris, or pigmy. It 

 is noted by Linnaeus, in some editions of his Systema Naturce, as 

 the Homo Troglodytes. Blumenbach, giving a truer value to the 

 condition of the innermost digit of the hind foot, which was like a 

 thumb, called it the Simla Troglodytes; it afterwards became more 

 commonly known as the ( Chimpanzee.' 



At a later period, naturalists became acquainted with a similar 

 kind of ape, of quiet docile disposition, with the same sad, human- 

 like expression of features. It was brought from Borneo or Suma- 

 tra; where it is known by the name of Orang, which, in the language 

 of the natives of Borneo, signifies 'man,' with the distinctive 

 addition of Outan, meaning ' Wood-man/ or ' Wild Man of the 

 Woods.' This creature differed from the pigmy, or Simla Tro- 

 glodytes of Africa, by being covered with hair of a reddish-brown 

 colour, and by having the anterior, or upper limbs, much longer in 

 proportion, and the thumb upon the hind feet somewhat less. It 

 was entered in the zoological catalogue as the Simla Satyrus. A 

 governor of Batavia, Baron Wurmb, had transmitted to Holland, 

 in 1780, the skeleton of a large kind of ape, tailless, like this small 

 species from Borneo, but with a much -developed face, and large 

 canine teeth, and bearing thick callosities upon the cheeks, giving 

 it, upon the whole, a very baboon-like physiognomy; and he called 

 it the Pongo. 



At the time when Cuvier revised his summary of our knowledge 

 of the animal kingdom, in the second edition of his l Regne Animal J 



1 ' Orang-Outang, sive Homo sylvestris ; or the Anatomie of a Pygmie ; com- 

 pared with that of a Monkey, an Ape and a Man/ 4to, 1699. 



