40 



A NEW HISTOEY OF 



His owner remarked, that poor Jemmy's strange 

 appearance, was much against his mixing with his 

 brethren, who, at times, would turn him into 

 ridicule. Had this good lady read the Latin 

 classics, I would have observed to her, — that, whilst 

 " alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur." 



I have not yet quite done with my remarks 

 on what travellers say of the orang-outang. 



1 marvel, that a naturalist so discerning and so 

 clever as he, whose history of this ape I have 

 quoted, should have selected his materials from the 

 reports of some and the writings of others, which 

 deserve neither credence nor attention. In fact, 

 their accounts of the orang-outang are manifest 

 absurdities. 



Had I but lent a willing ear to tales of some 

 whose minds were full of monsters in the wilder- 

 ness, my readers of the 6C Wanderings " would 

 indeed have had reason to condemn my credulity. 

 I have heard even white men express their firm 

 belief, that animals exist in the wilds of Guiana, 

 surpassing those which are spoken of in Ovid's 

 Metamorphoses. 



But travellers in Africa seem to take the lead 

 in zoological romance. One of these gentlemen of 

 fabricating talent, or of most extraordinary gullet, 

 positively asserts, that the apes called pongos, 



