44 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



to Africa, to inquire about the Oran Outan * : But it feems th€ 

 Society at prefent are otherwife employed. 



Before I have done with the Oran Outan, it is proper to obferve 

 that we muft diftinguifh betwixt fome Animals in the Eafl Indies, 

 particularly in the ifland of Borneo, which bear the name of Oran 

 Outan, and the Oran Outan of Angola, of whom only I have 

 Iiitherto fpoken. There is a letter to Sir John Pringle, publifhed 

 in the Philofophical Tranfadions for the year 1779, from a 

 Profellbr of Anatomy in the Univerfity of Groninghen, who 

 fays he d'iflcded fome Oran Outans, in whom he did not find 

 the organs of fpeech fuch as they are in Man : But he tells 

 us that thofe Oran Outans were all from the Ifland of Borneo ; 

 whereas the Oran Outan, fo accurately difledlcd by TiflTon, who 

 fays that he had exadly the fame organs of voice that a Man has f , 

 was from Angola ; and, in other refpeds, he was different from the 

 Oran Outans of Borneo, as this Profeflbr remarks. It is not, there- 

 fore, without reafon, that he concludes that thofe African PithecaSy 

 as he calls them, are a different Animal from the Pithecas of Borneo, 

 which he holds to be the fame as the Pithecas of the Antients %. 



But, leaving the Oran Outan, of whom I have faid a great deal too 

 much for the philofopher, though too little for the men who be- 

 lieve nothing except upon the evidence of their own fenfcs, I will 

 proceed to mention other flids, which, I think, (fetting him afide,) 

 eftablifh the real exiflence of a flate of Nature. 



And, 



* Sir John's letter is dated the 8th February 1774, and he fays the gentleman was 

 to fail the next fpring for Africa ; but I never heard more of him. 

 t See TyiTon's Account of this Oran Outan, p. 51. 

 \ Page 167- of The Philofophical Tranfaftions for 1779. 



