SOME EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS. 339 



species in animals to be the infertility of their offspring. Monboddo 

 thinks we can find other criteria that are as conclusive and easier to 

 apply. We are entitled, he holds, to assign to the same species all ani- 

 mals which possess in common a large — but an undefined — number of 

 similar characteristics, provided that these characteristics appear to 

 be essential and 'such as have great influence upon their nature.' 

 Now the orang-outang greatly resembles man in his external form, 

 his anatomical structure, and even in his 'inward principle,' the 

 'natural habits and dispositions of the mind.' Upon this last point 

 of resemblance Monboddo particularly likes to dilate; it seems to be 

 his principal criterion of unity of species. The reason why the baboons 

 and other monkeys are, in the published treatise, denied kinship with 

 us is because, similar to us in other respects, they lack this intellectual 

 resemblance. Of the intellectual parts and the charm of temperament 

 of our brother the orang, Lord Monboddo exhibits an extremely exalted 

 opinion : " The orang-outang has the human intelligence, as much as 

 can be expected in an animal living without civility or arts : he has a 

 disposition of mind mild, docile and humane : he has the sentiments 

 and affections peculiar to our species, such as the sense of modesty, 

 of honor and of justice; and likewise an attachment and friendship 

 to one individual so strong in some instances that one friend will not 

 survive the other : they live in society and have some arts of life ; for 

 they build huts and use an artificial weapon for attack and defence, 

 viz., a stick; which no animal merely brute is known to do. They 

 show also counsel and design, by carrying off creatures of our species 

 for certain purposes, and keeping them for years together without 

 doing them any harm; which no brute creature was ever known to do. 

 They appear likewise to have some kind of civility among them, and 

 to practice certain rites, such as that of burying the dead." The 

 female orang-outang, it appears upon the testimony of Bontius the 

 Batavian physician, is modest to the point of prudery; and some of 

 the species are of so fine a sensibility that they shed tears copiously 

 upon being parted from persons to whom they have become attached. 



Monboddo 's arguments for his theory come somewhat nearer to the 

 proper homological proofs of evolution when he points out that the 

 os coccygis is plainly nothing but a rudimentary and abbreviated tail, 

 and that the civilized man thus carries about upon him a tell-tale 

 member which hopelessly betrays the secret of his ancestry. Monboddo 

 seems to opine that the loss of the tail by mankind has been com- 

 paratively recent, and that it is by no means universal ; in justification 

 of this opinion he adduces a number of travelers ' stories that are more 

 diverting than plausible. There is, for example, the story told by a 

 Swedish sailor — whose credibility was vouched for by Linnasus — who 

 saw on one of the Nicobar Islands 'a race of men that trafficked and 



