I THE MANDRILL 16 



'tis a 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 1744. 



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, 1 but why it is so called I 

 know not, nor did I ever hear the name before, neither can 

 those who call them so tell, except it be for their near resem- 

 blance 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 the eyebrows ; the nose very small, the mouth wide, 



1 " 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 

 ' ' Glosaographid, 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 Charleton's Onomasticon Zoicon, 1668. The 

 singular etymology of the word given by Buffon seems hardly a 

 probable ono. 



