60 THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



succeeded ; but found some difficulty in conveying his charge 

 to London, owing to objections on the part of coach proprietors. 

 After some delay he obtained two inside places in a night coach. 

 The chimpanzee proved a good traveller, and reached the 

 Gardens in excellent health and spirits. 



The arrival of this small anthropoid created a great deal of 

 excitement, quite comparable to that aroused when the hippo- 

 potamus came, some fifteen years later. Theodore Hook made 

 it the subject of some verses from which the descriptive lines 

 are quoted : 



The folks in town are nearly wild 



To go and see the monkey-child, 



In Gardens of Zoology, 



Whose proper name is Chimpanzee. 



To keep this baby free from hurt, 



He's dressed in a cap and a Guernsey shirt ; 



They've got him a nurse, and he sits on her knee. 



And she calls him her Tommy Chimpanzee. 



Tommy's span of life in captivity was short — just six months, 

 as is stated in the Council's Report for 1837. Broderip wrote 

 an interesting account of its habits for the Proceedings (1835, 

 pp. 160-8), from which it is evident that the chimpanzee lived 

 in the keeper's apartments, and was allowed a considerable 

 amount of liberty. In an article in the New Monthly (January, 

 1838) he included what may be called an obituary notice : 



Poor dear Tommy, we knew him well, and who is there who was not at 

 least his visiting acquaintance ? . . . . Peace be with him ! Everybody 

 loved him ; everybody was kind to him. In his last illness he was suffered 

 to come forth for a closer enjoyment of the kitchen-fire ; and there we saw 

 him sit, " leaning his cheek upon his hand," watching the gyrations of a 

 depending shoulder of mutton, as it revolved and hissed between him and 

 the glowing grate— no, not with the prying mischievous eyes of ordinary 

 monkeys ; but with a pensive philosophic air that seemed to admit his own 

 inferiority, and to say— "Ah ! man is, indeed, the cooking animal."* 



Gibbons were exhibited in 1839, so that before the end of 

 the first decade three of the four anthropoid apes had come 

 into the possession of the Society.f 



*Thi8 animal was the subject of Owen's paper "On the Morbid Appearances 

 observed in the Dissection of the Chimpanzee," in Froceedvigs, 1836, p. 41. 

 t Proceedings, 1839, p. 148. 



J 



