I THE PONGO AND ENGECO 



afford great delight to the nobles by imitating 

 human gestures." As this might apply to almost 

 any kind of apes, I should have thought little 

 of it, had not the brothers De Bry, whose 

 engravings illustrate the work, thought fit, in 

 their eleventh " Argumentum," to figure two of 

 these " Simisa magnatum deliciaB." So much of 

 the plate as contains these apes is faithfully copied 

 in the woodcut (Fig, 1), and it will be observed 

 that they are tail-less, long-armed, and large- 

 eared ; and about the size of Chimpanzees. It 

 may be that these apes are as much figments of 

 the imagination of the ingenious brothers as the 

 winged, two-legged, crocodile-headed dragon which 

 adorns the same plate ; or, on the other hand, it 

 may be that the artists have constructed their 

 drawings from some essentially faithful description 

 of a Gorilla or a Chimpanzee. And, in either 

 case, though these figures are worth a passing- 

 notice, the oldest trustworthy and definite 

 accounts of any animal of this kind date from 

 the 17th century, and are due to an Englishman. 

 The first edition of that most amusing old 

 book, "Purchas his Pilgrimage," was published 

 in 1613, and therein are to be found many 

 references to the statements of one whom Purchas 

 terms "Andrew Battell (my neere neighbour, 

 dwelling at Leigh in Essex) who served under 

 Manuel Silvera Perera, Governor under the King 

 of Spaine, at his city of Saint Paul, and with him 



