54 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



It would be easy to show that nearly all the most remarkable species 

 of apes have been accurately defined by the ancients under the names 

 of pitheci, sphynxes, satyrs, cebi, cynocephali, cercopitheci*. 



They knew and described even the smaller descriptions of glires, 

 when they had any peculiarity of conformation or remarkable pro- 

 pertyf- But the smaller species do not concern us ; it is enough to 

 have shown that all the larger kinds, distinguished by some marked 

 characteristic, which we have now any knowledge of in Europe, Asia, 

 and Africa, were already known to the ancients ; whence we may 

 safely draw the conclusion, that if they do not describe the smaller, 

 or if they do not discriminate between those which closely resembled 

 each other, as the gazelles and others, they were prevented by care- 

 lessness or want of method, rather than by opposition from the cli- 

 mate. We shall also determine, that if eighteen or twenty ages, and 

 the circumnavigation of Africa and the Indies, have added nothing in 

 this species to what the ancients already knew, that there is no likeli- 

 hood that ages to come will bring much additional information to our 

 posterity. 



But perhaps an inverse argument may be used against us, and it 

 will be said, that not only the ancients, as we have just proved, have 

 known as many animals as ourselves, but they have described many 

 which we now have not ; that we are too hasty in regarding these 

 animals as fabulous ; that we should again search for them before we 

 decide in exhausting the history of the existing creation ; that indeed, 

 amongst these pretendedly fabulous animals, we shall detect, when 

 we know them better, the originals of our remains of unknown species. 

 Some may even surmise that those different monsters, the essential 

 ornaments of the heroic age amongst nearly all people, are precisely 

 those which it has been necessary to destroy, to admit of the progress 

 and establishment of civilization. Thus Theseus and Bellerophon, 

 who bravely defeated these noxious animals, must have been far more 

 fortunate than the existing race, but have not yet contrived to exter- 

 minate any one species, but only to drive them back. 



It is easy to reply to this objection, by examining the descriptions 

 of these unknown beings, and searching into their origin. 



The most numerous have a source purely mythological, and of that 

 their descriptions bear the undeniable impress ; for we see in nearly 

 all only portions of known animals, united by an unrestrained fancy, 



* See Lichtenstein, Comment, de Simiarium quotquot veteribus innotuerint formis. 

 Hamburg, 1791. 



T The jerboa is engraved on the medals of Cyrene, and pointed out by Aristotle as 

 the rat with two feet. 



