Scientific Intelligence.— -New Pubhcations. S99 



times), which, in a state of domestication, breeds in France, and still occurs 

 in a wild state, on the least accessible parts of the rock of Gibi-altar. No 

 doubt, in the pithecus of Galen, a double opening is said to have been observed 

 in the cavity of the larynx, a character believed by many to be peculiar to 

 the orang-outangs, and .Camper was certainly of opinion that that ancient 

 physician had anatomised and described the last-named animal ; but M. De 

 Blainville has lately exhibited conclusive evidence, that the subject of Ga- 

 len's observations was no other than the common magot. The Simla Porca. 

 ria^ as indicated by Aristotle, appears to have been a baboon ; and, in regard 

 to the Kebos or varied monkey, the Callithina (beautiful-haired) or green mon- 

 key, and the Cercopithecos vr long-tailed guemon, which, I believe, constitute 

 the remaining species of the genus described by ancient writers, none of these 

 has ever been confounded with the subjects of the present inquiry. The 

 orangs, or greater apes, have been divided into several subgenera, which dif- 

 fer in locality, colour, and relative proportions, but agree in having the hyoid 

 bone, the liver, and the ccecum, formed like those of man." 



Our author then enters upon the first division of the great 

 Linna3an genus Simia, viz. the subgenus Troglodytes, of which 

 he gives the characters, and then details the natural history 

 of the only species which it contains, the Man of the Woods, 

 or Homo sylvestris of Tyson, commonly called the Black 

 Orang-outang. These details are commenced with the fol- 

 lowing introductory paragraph : 



" Although the Black or African Orang of all known animals bears the 

 greatest resemblance, both in face and figure, to the human species, and, in 

 consequence of this resemblance, has not only been honoured by the foremost 

 place in our arrangements of the brute creation, but even placed as co-ordi- 

 nate with Man himself, he owes this elevation much more to his organic 

 structure than to any real superiority in his mental endowments. In a state 

 of domestication, he is far surpassed in acquired wisdom both by the dog and 

 the elephant ; and even the much- vaunted instinctive intelligence of his na- 

 tural condition is inferior to that of several four-footed creatures. That his 

 movements and modes of life should approximate in some degree to those of 

 the ' nobler savage,' is a necessary consequence of his physical structure, by 

 which he is also enabled, in captivity, to imitate more closely than any other 

 animal, the external actions of mankind ; but the moral and intellectual at- 

 tributes with which he has been gifted, must be referred to the fertile imagi- 

 nation of the natural historian. An historical account of the Orang-outang 

 would indeed prove little else than a summary of error and misrepresen- 

 tation. To say nothing of the female described by Dr Bontius, the modesty 

 of which was so great, that she could not endure to be looked at by such of 

 the learned Esculapian's male friends as were strangers to the domestic circle ; 

 even the sage Linncsus, in an early edition of the Systema Natures., has record- 

 ed his Homo nocturnus, or Night Wanderer, as thinking after the fashion of 

 an intelligent creature, and giving utterance to his thoughts in a whistling 

 language. The history of these animals, as given by Buffon,-is equally un- 



