eS ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book L 



Thus I'have proved, that the Ourang Outang is not only a man, 

 with refpedt to his body, but alfo in mind, the principal part of 

 man and of all other animals. As the reader, however, may be 

 defirous to know ftill more of this wonderful phenomenon of hu- 

 man nature I will add here fome information concerning him, 

 which I have lately received from a gentleman of the name of 

 Begg, who was captain of a Liverpool (hip, employed in the flave 

 trade on the coaft of Africa. He was promifed, he told me, a 

 handfome reward, if he could bring home an Ourang Outang from 

 Angola, where he faw herds of them, and was at great pains, with 

 the afliftance of his crew, to get hold of one of them ; but to no 

 purpofe. He therefore refolved, that as he could get none of them 

 alive, he would try to get one or more of them dead : And accor- 

 dingly he fired upon them, and killed fome of them, which 1 am 

 perfuaded he would not have done, if he had been as fuliy con- 

 vinced, as I am, that they were of the human fpecies. But in this, 

 too, he was likewife diiappointed ; for, before he and his crew could 

 get to the place where they fell, they were carried off by their com- 

 panions, for the purpofe, as he fuppofes, of burying them, which, we 

 are informed by others, they pradice*, 



I have correfponded with this gentleman likewife by letters, m 

 one of which he fays, that " In a voyage to Old Callabar in Africa, 

 '*- I purchafed a female Ourang Outang from one of the natives. She 

 " was, as I was informed, about eight months old, four foot fjx 

 *' inches high, of a dark brown colour, but white about the breafts j 

 " of a gentle difpofition, walked generally upright on her hind feet, 

 " fometimes on all four ; but the latter feemed to me not to be her 

 " natural motion. Palm nuts, roots, and fubacid fruits were her 

 " favourite food. She would "not eat beef or any animal fubftance. 

 '^^ Water, and wine drawn from the palm tree (very much efteemed 



"■ by 



* Vol. I. of Origin of Language, p. 274V 



