ORDER QUADRUMANA. 237 



seen and examined they found neither identity nor affinity 

 with themselves. 



It would seem reasonable to believe, after the lapse of 

 ages, that the progress of science and information of every 

 kind, and the increased facility of communication with 

 distant countries, would have imparted some degree of cau- 

 tion and accuracy to the reports of travellers, and set some 

 bounds to the extravagance of their fancy. At least we 

 should have supposed that professed naturalists, that men 

 of science and learning, would not have swallowed such in- 

 consistent and nonsensical fables with the indiscriminating 

 appetite of infantine credulity. But the fact is otherwise — 

 men not merely illiterate and unscientific, but apparently 

 devoid of the use of reason, and the faculty of observation, 

 have accidentally beheld in their rapid journeys some few 

 of these animals called apes. They have mingled in their 

 accounts the credulity of the natives of those coun- 

 tries where they are indigenous with their own fantasies 

 and falsehoods. Thus we have descriptions of men with 

 long tails, covered with yellowish hair, navigating the 

 ocean in boats and bartering parrots in exchange for iron . 

 Others have discovered long-armed men, covered also with 

 hair, traversing the country by night, robbing without dis- 

 crimination, and speaking a hissing language peculiar to 

 themselves, and unintelligible to us. Bontius, a grave 

 physician, gives us a long and laboured description of a 

 female ape, and adorns the object of his admiration with 

 all the modesty and virtue of the sex. If these animals do 

 not speak, it is only through discretion, and from a well- 

 grounded fear of being forced to labour, should they be 

 foolish enough to display the full extent of their capacity. 

 Gassendi assures us that the ape called Barris is a miracle 

 of judgment — that when he is once drest, he walks upright 

 ever after, and that he learns to play on the flute and 

 guitar with the utmost facility. Maupertuis would prefer 



Vol. I. S 



