2 
tur,” and contains a brief passage to the effect that “in the 
Songan country, on the banks of the Zaire, there are multi- 
tudes of apes, which afford great delight to the nobles by 
imitating human gestures.” As this might apply to almost 
any kind of apes, I should have thought little of it, had not 
the brothers De Bry, whose engravings illustrate the work, 
thought fit, in their eleventh “ Argumentum,” to figure two 
of these ‘‘ Simiz magnatum delicie.” So much of the plate 
as contains these apes is faithfully copied in the woodcut 
(fig. 1), and it will be observed that they are tail-less, long- 
armed, and large-eared ; and about the size of Chimpanzees. 
It may be that these apes are as much figments of the imagi- 
nation of the ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged, 
crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same plate; or, on 
the other hand, it may be that the artists have constructed 
their drawings from some essentially faithful description of a 
Gorilla or a Chimpanzee. And, in either case, though these 
figures are worth a passing notice, the oldest trustworthy and 
definite accounts of any animal of this kind date from the 
17th century, and are due to an Englishman. 
The first edition of that most amusing old book, “ Purchas 
his Pilgrimage,” was published in 1613, and therein are to be 
found many references to the statements of one whom 
Purchas terms “ Andrew Battell (my neere neighbour, dwell- 
ing at Leigh in Essex) who served under Manuel Silvera 
Perera, Governor under the King of Spaine, at his city of 
Saint Paul, and with him went farre into the countrey of 
Angola ;” and again, “ my friend, Andrew Battle, who lived 
in the kingdom of Congo many yeares,” and who, “upon 
some quarell betwixt the Portugals (among whom he was a 
sergeant of a band) and him, lived eight or nine moneths in 
the woodes.” From this weather-beaten old soldier, Purchas 
fettam, olim ex Edoardo Lopez acroamatis lingua Italica excerpta, num Latio 
sermone donata ab August. Cassiod. Reinio. Iconibus et imaginibus rerum 
memorabilium quasi vivis, opera et industria Joan. Theodori et Joan. Israelis de — 
Bry, fratrum exornata. Francofurti; mpxovut. 
