Scientific Intelligence. — New Publications. 



lie encouragement than any want of skill in the profession, that 

 so little had been done in illustration of scientific subjects. We 

 are sanguine that a better, or more extended, taste is now pre- 

 vailing, and that the success attending the execution of such 

 works as that now before us^ will be commensurate with the 

 higher and more improved character which they have assumed. 

 Without quoting the tritest maxim of political economy, it may 

 indeed be assumed as certain, that the advantage wiU prove re- 

 ciprocal, and that a more general taste for ornamental works of 

 Natural History will be met by corresponding exertions on the 

 part of those whose productions will reflect no discredit either 

 on the art, the science, or the literature of Scotland. 



The present Number of Mr Wilson's Illustrations contains 

 six coloured representations of remarkable animals. The first 

 Plate is devoted to the Asiatic and African Orang-Outang, and 

 is engraved after admirable drawings from life by the late Mr 

 Hov/itt. The figures of the Asiatic species especially, pour- 

 tray the character and aspect of that singular animal in a man- 

 ner superior to what we have yet observed in any former repre- 

 sentation of it. They greatly excel that of Mr Sydenham Ed- 

 wards, which we believe was taken from the same individual. 



" Allied," Mr Wilson observes, " to the human race by a grotesque re- 

 semblance in their form and structure, the principal species of this numerous 

 and diversified genus (Simla)., familiarly called Apes, Monkeys, and Baboons, 

 have for a long period excited the attention of the philosophical anatomist 

 and natural historian. The labours of Camper, Tyson, and Tilesius, of Geof- 

 froy, Lacepede, Audebert, Blainville, and the Cuviers, have been successive- 

 ly bestowed 6n the illustration of this tribe of animals ; and though many 

 points in their history still remain obscure, a considerable advancement has 

 no doubt been recently made towards their complete elucidation. It would 

 take long to tell of the numerous subgenera which have been formed in the 

 course of their systematic arrangement ; and as these may be more conve- 

 niently discussed in a future Number of this work, in which I shall have oc- 

 casion to describe some of the monkey tribe, properly so called, I shall con- 

 fine my observations, for the present, to the first division of the genus Sinda^ 

 viz. the Greater Apes, or Orang-outangs. 



" It appears probable, that the ancients were not acquainted with either 

 the African or Asiatic orang-outang, although a passage in the Periplus Han- 

 nonis has been supposed by some authors to indicate the chimpanze with suf- 

 ficient accuracy to establish their knowledge of that species. The Pithecos of 

 the Greeks, and the Simia of the Latins, of which we have notices of a suffi- 

 ciently imperfect nature in the works of Aristotle and Pliny, seems to have 

 been no othet than the magot or Barbary ape (the Simia Innuus of modern 



