THE MONKS Y FAMIL Y. 



159 



pitying and daring brother or cousin of yours should arrive to the 

 rescue ? Did your widely-spreading petticoats suffer nothing in the 

 scuffle ? 



Furthermore, another writer maintains that, in his voyage to 

 Angola in 1738, he knew. a negress at Loango who remained three 

 years with these animals ! ! Now, a sojourn of three years, argues 

 that there must. have been, somewhere or other, a permanent settle- 

 ment of the pongos. Hoax of unparalleled impudence, in him who 

 fabricated this most improbable story ! 



The same traveller, in speaking of certain orang-outangs which he 

 had purchased from a negro, does not content himself with informing 

 us that these orang-outangs had been instructed by the negro, but 

 actually is barefaced enough to state that they had performed spon- 

 taneously most of the feats recited. " These animals," he remarks, 

 " have the instinct of sitting at table like men. They eat every kind 

 of food without distinction. They use a knife, a fork, or a spoon, to 

 cut or lay hold of what is put on the plate. They drink wine and 

 other liquors. We carry them aboard. At table, when they wanted 

 anything, they signified as much to the cabin-boy; and when the 

 boy refused to give them what they demanded, they sometimes 

 became enraged, seized him by the arm, bit, and threw him down." 

 Now, mind, astonished reader, most of what has just been stated 

 was the effect of instinct, not of instruction. 



A man weak enough to put any faith in such phenomena, and in 

 such palpable exaggerations of monkey achievements in foreign parts, 

 may easily be persuaded that our herons here at home do actually 

 thrust their legs through holes at the bottom of the nests during the 

 period of incubation, or that the flamingo hatches her eggs on a 

 truncated kind of pyramid nest, with her legs supporting the body 

 on the outside, somewhat in imitation of a little boy astride a barrel. 

 I have seen somewhere in print, a representation of this last-men- 

 tioned absurdity, and more than once have had to argue the point 

 with certain lovers of the marvellous in natural history. They 

 maintained that the legs of these birds were too long to admit of 

 their being brought up under the body during incubation ; and my 

 arguers only gave in, by my showing them that a corresponding 

 length of thigh in the heron and flamingo allowed these birds to sit 



