:EATTVE NATURAL HISTORY. 



young men. 18. On th.i bridge. 19. On the picture*. 10. Upon this 

 fhe footman. 22. Of the Bridegroom. 23. To tho 

 tranger on the mattress. M. Th- uplU. 28. Of i!"- 



ememlds. 27. To the writer*. 28. From the printer*. 28. In utm. 

 ;M. in tl,.. ii !: . , thebooU. 32. With tuuy. 33. With tli 



lie sculptors. 35. By tool*. 36. For the wood- 

 ... BworU-cutler. 38. Upon the rock. 39. On the 

 ;. Of the bird. 42. To the friend. 43. 

 bone. 44. The errors. 45. Of the engravers. 46. To the 

 ungrateful. -17. From tho trees. 48. In honour. 40. In the year. 

 50. In the ears. 51. With love. 52. With the drew. 53. With tho 

 wicked. !'* the workman. 56. For the flat- 



teren. 57. Ou the building. 58. Upon the unhappy. 



RECREATIVE NATURAL HISTORY. 



THE APE FAMILY t-OBANQ-OUTANO CHIMPANZEE- 



GORILLA, 



NATURALISTS place man at tho head of vertebrated animals, 

 but immediately after come the apes, taking rank as the highest 

 of all brute creatures. Uneducated men do not, however, re- 

 gard these singular " four-handed" beings with much liking or 

 respect. Curiosity is, indeed, always excited when an ape is 

 Been, and the surest way to draw London to the Zoological 

 Gardens would be an advertisement that an orang, a chimpanzee, 

 or still better, a gorilla, had come into the possession of the 

 society. But the curiosity of most spectators would be modified 

 by a feeling of shrinking, or even of disgust. Scientific anatomists 

 might examine with unmixed delight these men-like animals, 

 but the greater number would feel as if a hideous caricature of 

 the " human form divine" wore set before them. As the Roman 

 poet Ennius felt, 2,000 years ago, so do men regard an ape now, 

 as " turpissima bestia" most hideous creature).* The same 

 sentiment is shown in many old writers, who represent the 

 demons in the forms of apes. What will ladies, who protest 

 " they will never be married," say to the old notion, that aH 

 such dames wonld be attended by troops of apes in purgatory .f 



But, notwithstanding this wide-spread feeling of dislike, man 

 is irresistibly drawn to study creatures so strangely resembling 

 himself in form, and so able to imitate many of his actions. 

 The marvellous stories of travellers, and the fancies of certain 

 theorists, have further stimulated this curiosity. We have been 

 told of apes walking erect like men, and playing on flute-like 

 instruments ; that some were regarded as degenerated human 

 tribes, and possessed the gift of language. William Bosnian, 

 the Dutch traveller in Africa, Bagely conjectured that apes re- 

 frained from speaking, when near men, lest they should be caupht 

 and set to work! Some of our readers are probably famiiui? 

 with the question, " Are not men simply improved and educated 

 apes ? " There must be something worthy of consideration in tir. 

 order of animals respecting which such an inquiry could be put. 



We may here ask, what is an ape ? Were we to reply, "It is 

 a four-handed, vertebrated mammal," the answer would be 

 correct, but not sufficiently full, as the same definition would 

 apply to most of the monkeys. We must therefore add that 

 the true apes are without tails, and have no cheek pouches, ir. 

 which to stow away food as it is gathered. The absence o: 

 tails and of cheek pouches distinguishes the apes from the mon- 

 keys and baboons. These cheek pouches, are, it is true, generally 

 absent in the slow monkeys (Semno pithecus) ; but the long tnil.- 

 of the various species in this family must always clearly separate 

 them from the orang or the chimpanzee. 



We must now give a short description of each of the ape < 

 named at the head of this paper, and conclude with some special 

 notes on the whole family. 



THE ORANG-OtrTAjra. The orang-outang, or red ape of Asia, 

 was named Simia satyrus by Linnaeus, but is now usually 

 known as Pithecus satyrus. Orany appears to be a Malay woru, 

 meaning " men," or " people," and utan signifies "aforest;" so 

 that orang-utan (or outang) denotes " the people of the woods.' ' 

 Simia, a word derived from the Greek, and signifying Hat-nosed, 

 is appropriate to the whole order. The epithet satyru* would 

 naturally be selected by these whose minds were filled with the 

 fabulous stories of the satyrs, beings intermediate between mau 

 and brutes. Tho name pithecus (irftfrjKor), being the Greek word 



" Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis." 

 t For allusions to this idea, see Shakespeare's "Much Ado Abo..: 

 Nothing," act ii., iccae i., and the " Taming of thu Shrew/' act ;. 

 scene i. 



for ape, teemed, when added to the term tatyrut, a fit 



for the orang-outang. 

 The orang was, probably, tho only ape known to Bach ancient 

 naturalists an Aristotle, Pliny, and Galen. The latter is thought 

 to hare dissected some of these animals as the beet available 

 means of gaining a knowledge of the human skeleton. 



The region* inhabited by these apes are Borneo, Java, Sumatra, 



an 1 tint inlands of the Malay Archipelago, the latter being 



'ill "1, by a livinp writer, the home of " the orang-utan and of 



i of paradise." Solomon may have procured his ape* from 



1 Kings x. 2), and the common English name of the 



- U derived, by some, from a Sanscrit word. 



In tho gloomy depths of tropical forests the orangn find 



a home exactly suited to their organisation and wants. Being 



strict vegetarians, they obtain abundance of food at all seasons 



from the luxuriant fruits nourished by the fertilising warmth 



of an endless summer. Their four hands, long arms, %pd 



-rms adapt them for living and travelling among the 



e foliage, so that they are as trnly formed for the forests 



as birds for the air. 



Opportunities for observing these creatures are rare, and it 

 Jldom that orang, chimpanzee, and gorilla are to be seen in 

 this country. The stuffed skins, well set up, and the skeletons 

 may, indeed, be studied at South Kensington ; but something 

 more than dried bones and preserved integuments are necessary 

 to give a vivid idea of the activities and energies of life. 

 Whether the orang is the most clever of the apes, or the most 

 capable of education, cannot be ascertained with our present 

 limited knowledge. Wo will shortly present in one view the 

 various points of resemblance or difference between the several 

 species, only remarking at present that the capacity for 

 imitating human actions seems to be rather stronger in the 

 chimpanzee than in the orang. Some of these apes are said 

 to exceed man in height. One killed in Sumatra was found 

 to measure seven feet, and possessed strength in proportion. 

 Let the reader picture to himself an ape seven feet high, 

 covered with long and light-brownish hair, broad-chested, long- 

 armed, but short-legged, running along the ground with a 

 waddling gait, but climbing trees like a cat, and springing from 

 branch to branch with the activity of a squirrel and a speed 

 truly marvellous. This orang was discovered by a body of 

 armed sailors, and instinctively showed his dread of man by 

 attempting to hide himself amidst the foliage of the highest 

 tree. The strength of this ape may be estimated from the fact, 

 that after receiving five musket-balls in his body, he sprang so 

 vigorously from tree to tree, that the men were forced to fell 

 every tree in the clump before they could bring their victim to 

 the ground. Even then the dying ape taxed to the utmost the 

 strength of his assailants, and snapped a stout spear in two as 

 if it had been a lath. His peculiar expression when dying, and 

 the mode in which he placed his hands on the wounds, as if to 

 stop the flow of blood, made some of the Bailors feel as if they 

 were killing a being of their own race. 



THE CHIMPANZEE (Simia troglodytes) has been described 

 under various names, among which are Black Orang, Pygmy, 

 Smitten, Pongo, and Troglodytes, the last being the most ab- 

 surd. The reader will admit this, when he bears in mind that 

 troglodytes* is a Greek word, signifying a dweller in caves. As 

 the chimpanzees live in trees, the application of such a term to 

 them may seem like a freak of fancy. These apes have been 

 honoured by receiving a name which anciently designated a 

 supposed nation living along the shores of the Eed Sea, and of 

 whom the old writers tell many a wondrous tale. They were 

 small people, rodo on small horses, fed on great serpents, had 

 not the gift of speech, but were able to laugh, and were pos- 

 sessed of the fountain of the sun, which gave them an abundant 

 supply of hot water every evening ! 



The chimpanzee is thought by some to stand nearer to man 

 than the other apes, and even Linnteus was for a time at a loss 

 whether to rank the creature as the lowest among men or the 

 highest among the quadrumana. Some eminent men now deny 

 the first place even among the apes to the chimpanzee, urging 

 the claims of the gorilla, or those of the kooloo-kamba. Such 

 ' doubts " may well make men hesitate before they give the hut 

 correction to their zoological creeds. The chimpanzee appears 

 to have the power of walking more upright than the orangs ; tho 



, from TP^XH, a cow, and **, I Hid* or UM ia. 



