162 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[March 1, 1886. 



Missourian Senator, Mr. Benton, sti-ovc hard to obtain a 

 bullion currency.) 



Bnlhj. Adj. and adv. Pine or finely. 

 Now is the time for a hulhj trip, 

 To shake her up and let her rip. 



liontman's Sang. 

 "Bully for you," means " well done you. 



Bullyrag. To revile. Thus they bullyrag the presi- 

 dential candidates till one or other is elected ; after -which 

 bullyragging is considered had form. 



Bummer. A lazy, idle loafer. 



Bundle. Yerb. Obsolete. A man and -woman Ij'ing on 

 the same bed, in their clothes, were said to hnndle, or to 

 he bundled. For the full significance of the word, and 

 the propriety of the practice, see Irving's " Knicker- 

 bockers." The Rev. I. Peters, in his " General History 

 of Connecticut," says that thoi-igh it would be accounted 

 the greatest rudeness for a gentleman to speak before a 

 lady of a garter or a leg, yet it was thought but a piece 

 of civility to ask her to bundle." He shows that 

 birndling -was not only a Christian custom, but a polite 

 and |irudent fme ! 



Bunkum; or Buncome. Talk not meant to be taken au 

 grand serieux. A member for Buncombe, who bored 

 many otit of Congress, told the rest thcj- might go, he 

 was only talking for Buncombe. The practice is unknown 

 — I need hardly say — in the old country. 



Burgle. To commit burglary. Much older than the 

 " Pirates of Penzance." 



Bush Meeting. The original negro form of the modern 

 camp-meeting. A relic of Jumboism. 



Bushwhacker. The equivalent of our English Clod- 

 hopjjer. 



Bust. A frolic. To go on A bust, is to go on a big 

 spree. (See " Bulge.) 



By and again. A Southern expression for "now and 

 then." In England I have often heard "now and again," 

 in this sense. 



By and large. On the whole. 



ANTHROPOID APES-* 



'HERE can be little if any doubt that by 

 far the larger part of the insensate and 

 unreasoning rage with which theologians 

 have attacked and abused the theory of 

 evolution has had its origin in that 

 human pride which disdains to ndmit of 

 the existence of any actual affinity among 

 the higher orders of the mammalia. That any community 

 of lineage should be claimed on anatomical and physio- 

 logical grounds between the two Linnwan families of 

 Homo sapiens and Antltroporrnopha is sufficient to set a 

 good many well-meaning and conscientious (if slightly 

 ignorant) people shrieking hysterically concerning the 

 fearful impiety of the suggestion of those patient ob- 

 servers who, little by little, have shown the origin of 

 mankind, beyond any cavil or question from any one 

 competent to understand evidence. Everyone who wishes 

 to under.st:!nd the grounds on which it is held that man 

 and the highest apes have a com-mou ancestry will find 

 them lucidly, philosophically, and temperately set forth 

 in Professor Hartmann's book. That, as stated some 

 years ago by Professor Huxley, the lower apes are further 

 removed from the higher apes than the latter are from 

 man, has never been seriously impttgned ; the allegation 

 being however generally met with an attempted 



* " Anthropoid Apes." By Robert Hartmann. International 

 Scientific Series. (London : Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co. 1885.) 



intellectual comparison between the gorilla, chim- 

 panzee, or ouran-outang of the menagerie with 

 Bacon, Shnkespeare, or Newton. The fallacy and 

 unfairness of such a comparison needs only to be stated 

 to become evident to anyone who has ever seen a Fuegian, 

 Bosjesman, or lower native Australian in a state of 

 nature. For it is not intellectvral ptu'ity which forms the 

 bond of union between the anthropoid r^ies and the 

 human species, or is adduced as proving it, but i.natomieal 

 and physiological relations of a character practically 

 identical, which are set forth in minute detail in the 

 work to which this short notice is designed to direct 

 attention. Everybody familiar either from personal 

 observation or authentic drawings with the aspect of 

 many tribes of negroes or of Guaranis, Malays, and 

 Papuans will admit that their external approximation to 

 the simian type is of the closest. Nor need the ape 

 always fear comparison, even from a psychical or ethical 

 point of view, with so-called " civilised ' man. Without 

 repeating Darwin's well-worn anecdote of the little 

 Americr.n monkey which attacked the fierce baboon to 

 save his keeper's life, we may take a recent police report, 

 cut almost at random out of a daily paper, and contrast 

 the behaviour and sensibility of the " Lord of Creation " 

 who figures therein with that manifested by Mafuca, the 

 chimpanzee at the Dresden Zoological Gardens, ^s 

 narrated by Professor Hartmann. In the Standard of 

 N"ov. 9th, we read : — 



John Dunkin, i.'!, a hawker of umbrellas, was brought up. on 

 remand, charged with causing the death of Elizabeth Jackson, a 

 woman with whom he was living, at 3, Medland-street, Ratcliff. 

 Last Thursday week the prisoner and the deceased woman were 

 seen quarrelling, o%ving to the prisoner wanting to go and pawn 

 the boots he had been wearing. He was tlien seen to strike the 

 woman at the back of the ear with liis hand, but whether his fist 

 was clenched or not could not be said. \\'hen Jackson arrived at 

 the lodging-house she was bleeding from the face, and also from a 

 wound behind the ear. In answer to a question put to her by the 

 deputy of the lodging-house, she said, "Patsy did it." A woman 

 named Mary Ann Walford said she saw Jackson down on 

 the landing, opposite her bedroom, and the prisoner was stand- 

 ing over her, and when about to kick her he was prevented. 

 Another woman stated she saw Dunkin kick the -ivoman in the 

 stomach and side, and she fell to the ground. Dankin was then 

 heard to say, " If I had my big boots on, I would kick your face in." 

 The woman then became very ill, and in & short time afterwards she 

 died. When tlie police came and airested the man, he asked, " Is 

 she dead ? " On being told that she was, he clenched his fists, and, 

 looking very savagely at the corpse, said, " Nobody shall know her. 

 I will disfigure her." A medical man stated that on the back of the 

 ear was a lacerated wound, which was quite recent. The cause of 

 death was heart disease, accelerated by drink and excitement. The 

 woman must have been a hard drinker, and excitement might have 

 been caused by the knocking about she had received. Tlie blows 

 might also have accelerated death. No further evidence was now 

 adduced. Mr. Lushington committed the prisoner for trial. 



"Which of the so-called "brutes" could or would 

 so degrade itself as to act towards the corpse of its 

 fellow as Mr. Dunkin is here alleged to have done ? 

 Let us contrast the feeling he showed with that 

 exhibited by the despised ape, when her end was 

 approaching. Premising that Schopf was the Director 

 of the Zoological Gardens, at Dresden, we read, " Just 

 before her death, from consumption, she put her arms 

 round Schopf's neck when he came to visit her, looked 

 at him placidly, kissed him three times, stretched out 

 her hand to him and died. The last moments of 

 anthropoids have their tragic side." Let us beware lest 

 in our anxiety to assert our own supremacy we are led 

 into the moral cant. To all who wish to see a most able 

 resume of the facts from which the common origin of 

 Man and the Anthropoid Apes must be inferred we 

 would heartily commend the volume before us. 



