I THE MANDRILL. 15 



Brute-Animal sui generis, and a particular species 

 of Ape," 



The name of " Chimpanzee," by which one of 

 the African Apes .is now so well known, appears 

 to have come into use in the first half of the 

 eighteenth century, but the only important addi- 

 tion made, in that period, to our acquaintance with 

 the man-like apes of Africa is contained in " A 

 New Voyage to Guinea," by William Smith, which 

 bears the date 174-1. 



In describing the animals of Sierra Leone, p. 

 51, this writer says: — 



" I shall next describe a strange sort of animal, called 

 by the white men in this country Mandrill,* but why it 

 is so called I know not, nor did I ever hear the name be- 

 fore, neither can those who call them so tell, except it be 

 for their near resemblance of a human creature, though 

 nothing at all like an Ape. Their bodies, when full grown, 

 are as big in circumference as a middle-sized man's — 

 their legs much shorter, and their feet larger; their arms 

 and hands in proportion. The head is monstrously big, 

 and the face broad and flat, without any other hair but 



* a 



Mandrill " seems to signify a " man-like ape," the 

 word " Drill " or " Dril " having been anciently employed 

 in England to denote an Ape or Baboon. Thus in the 

 fifth edition of Blount's " Glossographia, or a Dictionary 

 interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language now- 

 used in our refined English tongue . . . very useful for all 

 such as desire to understand what they read," published 

 in 1681, I find, "Dril — a stonecutter's tool wherewith he 

 bores little holes in marble, &c. Also a large overgrown 

 Ape and Baboon, so called." " Drill " is used in the same 

 sense in Charleston's Onomasticon Zoicon, 1668. The sin- 

 gular etymology of the word given by Buffon seems hardly 

 a probable one. 



