Early Rumours of Anthropoids 149 



with a study of classical and mediaeval legends of the 

 existence of pigmies and man-like creatures; but, while 

 recognising that legends of satyrs and fauns were pre- 

 sages of the discovery of man-like apes, he was unable 

 to find any actual record earlier than that contained in 

 Pigafetta's Description of the Kingdom of Congo, drawn 

 up from the notes of a Portuguese sailor and published 

 in 1598. The descriptions and figures in this work ap- 

 parently referred to chimpanzees. From this date on- 

 wards he traces the literature of the animals in question, 

 and then proceeds to give an account of them. 



There are four distinct kinds of man-like apes : in 

 Eastern Asia the Orangs and the Gibbous (although 

 some later writers differ from Huxley in removing the 

 Gibbons from the group of anthropoids) ; in Western 

 Africa, the Chimpanzees and the Gorillas. All these 

 have certain characters in common. They are inhabit- 

 ants of the old world; they all have the same number 

 of teeth as man, possessing four incisors, two canines, 

 four premolars, and six true molars in each jaw, in the 

 adult condition, while the milk dentition, as in man, 

 consists of twenty teeth, — four incisors, two canines, and 

 four molars in each jaw. vSince Huxley wrote, a large 

 bulk of additional work upon teeth has been published, 

 and we now know that man and the anthropoid apes 

 display the same kind of degenerative specialisation in 

 their jaws. Simpler and older forms of mammals 

 had a much larger number of teeth, and these differed 

 among themselves more than the teeth of the higher 

 forms. In the Anthropoids and Man, the jaws are pro- 

 portionately shorter and less heavy than in simpler 

 forms, and, in correspondence with this, the number of 

 the teeth has become reduced, while the teeth them- 

 selves tend to form a more even row. The canine or 



