I—ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 
OF THE 
MAN-LIKE APES. 
Ancrknv traditions, when tested by the severe processes of 
modern investigation, commonly enough fade away into mere 
dreams: but it is singular how often the dream turns out to 
have been a half-waking one, presaging a reality. Ovid 
foreshadowed the discoveries of the geologist: the Atlantis 
was an imagination, but Columbus found a western world : 
and though the quaint forms of Centaurs and Satyrs have an 
existence only in the realms of art, creatures approaching 
man more nearly than they in essential structure, and yet 
as thoroughly brutal as the goat’s or horse’s half of the 
mythical compouns, are now not only known, but notorious. 
I have not met 
with any notice of 
one of these Man- 
Like Apes of earlier 
date than that con- 
tained in Pigafetta’s 
“ Description of the 
kingdom of Congo,”* 
drawn up from the 
notes of a Portuguese 
sailor, Eduardo Lo- 
pez, and published 
in 1598. The tenth 
chapter of this work 
is entitled “De Animalibus que in hac provincia reperiun- 
Fic. fie Simi magnatum delicie.—De Bry, 1598. 
* Recnum Congo: hoc est Vera Descriptio ReGNI AFRICANI QUOD 
TAM AB INCOLIS QUAM LusITANIS CONGUS APPELLATUR, per Philippum Piga- 
B 
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