588 ON THE MONKEYS KNOWN TO THE CHINESE. 



the business of life have not allowed him the leisure to inspect 

 a copy of it, should it be in the possession of University Col- 

 lege, in the splendid library of Dr. Morrison. Although the 

 'Kang-he tsze teen' was not minutely examined, it was occa- 

 sionally referred to ; but since Chinese plates are far better 

 than descriptions for the general enquirer, the ' San tsae too 

 too hwuy ' was the work chiefly consulted, and other works 

 used in a subsidiary point of view, to eke out its deficiencies. 

 Some idea seemed fixed in the naturalist's mind that a higher 

 order of apes than either the oran-otan, or chimpanzee, had 

 been said to exist in China; and accordingly the native 

 authorities were most diligently searched, in order to find the 

 animal in question, and the results, such as they are, are now 

 at the disposal of zoologists. 



The oldest work which contains pictorial illustrations, is 

 the ' Shan hae king,' or * Book of hills and streams,' a very 

 dull itinerary of the empire, full of mythological ideas relating 

 to " dragon -haunted streams and elf-frequented hills," but 

 excessively monotonous and prosy in its general narrative. — 

 It is illustrated with an ample commentary, and was written 

 during the dynasty of Han ; being of some archaeological in- 

 terest, but tiring to the patience of the general reader. In 

 this book appears a plate of an animal called Sing-sing or 

 Sang-sang ; and the account, as well as the plate, have been 

 implicitly followed by the Encyclopedia which appeared un- 

 der the dynasty of Ming. As this is the animal called oran- 

 otan by the Jesuits and Dr. Morrison, a short description of 

 the plate is necessary. As figured, it is essentially man ; it 

 stands erect, with a broad human countenance, and mass of 

 frontal brain ; it has feet, not hands, on its posterior extremi- 

 ties : in its left hand, articulated as in mankind, it holds a 

 bunch of fruit, in its right, a young animal of the same class. 

 The features are Caucasian, and its hair reaches from the 

 crown of the head, whence it falls in rich profusion, to the 

 earth. " In its exterior appearance," says the Shan hae king, 

 " it is like an ape ; it walks with its face down, runs erect, 

 and comes out of the Chaouyaou hills." — (Plate iii. 1). The 

 description annexed to the plate of the ' San tsae too hwuy ' 

 states, — "Tseo shan yew show chwang joo yu, luy Me-how, 

 fa-chuy ta ; keang-tung shan chung yih yew ming Sing-sing 

 nang yen." " In the Tseo magpie hills there are animals whose 

 external appearance islike an ape's of the Mehow species; their 

 hair reaches to the earth. In the Keangtung hills there are 

 animals called Singsing, that can speak." — (Zoology, Book 

 iv. Art. 39). In the ' Kang-he tsze tsen,' under the article 

 Sing, are collected a number of accounts from other diction- 



