22 
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
that it is a most wonderful thing to see them acted 
with so much exactness by an irrational animal." Of 
the gravity, capacity, and wisdom of the wonderful 
creature thus celebrated, the visiters either of the Gar- 
dens, or of the Museum in Bruton Street, have now 
an opportunity of judging for themselves; but it is 
sadly to be feared that their estimate of its character 
will not exactly tally with that of the Reverend Father 
to whom we are indebted for this, the earliest incidental 
notice of its existence. 
The pious missionary, whose account of his voyage 
to the East Indies was published at Rome in 1678, 
was followed by a plain English seaman, Robert Knox 
by name, who was detained a prisoner in the island of 
Ceylon for nearly twenty years, and who, on his return 
to his native land, in 1681, gave to the world his 
Historical Relation of that almost unknown region. 
He tells us that some of the Monkeys found there are 
" as large as our English Spaniel Dogs, of a darkish 
gray colour, and black faces, with great white beards 
round from ear to ear, which make them show just like 
old men and in somewhat of the likeness of old men 
he therefore figures them. " They do but little mis- 
chief," he adds, "keeping in the woods, eating only 
leaves and buds of trees ; but when they are catched 
they will eat any thing. This sort they call in their 
language Wanderows." The descriptions given by both 
these authors, although very concise, agree so well with 
the actual characters of the Monkey to which BufFon 
has applied the same appellation, under the French 
disguise of Ouanderou, that there can be no doubt of 
their relating to the same animal. But this can hardly 
be said of that given by an anonymous traveller, who 
published, in 1701, an Historical Description of the 
Kingdom of Macassar ; and whose account of some of 
the Monkeys of that country has generally been referred 
