The GIBBON, or Long-armed APE 



* 



THE Gibbon keeps himfelf always eredl, e^ 

 ven when he walks on four feet ; becaufe 

 his arms are as long as both his body and legs. 

 We have feen him alive. He exceeded not three 

 feet in height ; but he was young, and in cap- 

 tivity. Hence we may prefume, that he had 

 not acquired his full dimenfions, and that, in a 

 natural ftate, he might arrive at four feet. He 

 has not the veftige of a tail. Eut he is diftin- 

 VoL. VIII. H guifhed 



* Long-armed ape, with a flat fwarthy face, fiirroundeJ 

 with gray hairs ; hair on the body black and rough ; buttocks 

 bare ; nails on the hands flat, on the feet long ; arms of a 

 difproportioned length, reaching quite to the ground when 

 the animal is erefl, its natural pofture ; of a hideous defor- 

 mity ; Pennant' s J)'nopf. of quad. p. 1 00. 



Gibbon is the name under which M. Dupleix gave us this a- 

 nimal, which he brought from the Eaft Indies. I firll imai^ined 

 this to be an Indian word. But I found, in a note upon Pliny 

 by Dalecamp, that Strabo liad denoted the cephtts by tJie 

 words keipon, from which guibon or gibbon had probably been 

 derived. The following is the paflage of Pliny, with Dale- 

 champ's note ; ' Pompeii Magni primum ludi oftenderunt ex 

 ' Ethiopia quas vocant cephos *, quarum pedes pofteriores 

 « pedibus humanis et cruribus, priores manibus fuere fimiles : 

 « Hoc animal poftea Roma non vidit.' 



* Cephos ; Strabo, lib. 15. y.ifxi7i vocat, efleque tradit facie 

 fatyro fimilem ; Dal. Plin. Hijl. Nat. lib. 8. cap. 19 Nota. It 

 appears that the cebus of the Greeks, and the cephus of Pliny, 

 which ought to be pronounced kdms and kepkiu, may hav? 

 originally come from kopb or kophiv, the Hebrew and Chaldean 

 name of the ape. 



