But I must leave this question to be settled by philologers and
travellers; and I should hardly have dwelt so long upon it except for
the curious part played by this word "_Pongo_" in the later history of
the man-like Apes.
The generation which succeeded Battell saw the first of the man-like
Apes which was ever brought to Europe, or, at any rate, whose visit
found a historian. In the third book of Tulpius' "Observationes Medicæ,"
published in 1641, the 56th chapter or section is devoted to what he
calls _Satyrus indicus_, "called by the Indians Orang-autang, or
Man-of-the-Woods, and by the Africans Quoias Morrou." He gives a very
good figure, evidently from the life, of the specimen of this animal,
"nostra memoria ex Angolâ delatum," presented to Frederick Henry Prince
of Orange. Tulpius says it was as big as a child of three years old, and
as stout as one of six years: and that its back was covered with black
hair. It is plainly a young Chimpanzee.
In the meanwhile, the existence of other, Asiatic, man-like Apes became
known, but at first in a very mythical fashion. Thus Bontius (1658)
gives an altogether fabulous and ridiculous account and figure of an
animal which he calls "Orang-outang"; and though he says, "vidi Ego
cujus effigiem hic exhibeo," the said effigies (see Fig. 6 for Hoppius'
copy of it) is nothing but a very hairy woman of rather comely aspect,
and with proportions and feet wholly human. The judicious English
anatomist, Tyson, was justified in saying of this description by
Bontius, "I confess I do mistrust the whole representation."
It is to the last mentioned writer, and his coadjutor Cowper, that we
owe the first account of a man-like ape which has any pretensions to
scientific accuracy and completeness. The treatise entitled,
"_Orang-outang, sive Homo Sylvestris_; or the Anatomy of a Pygmie
compared with that of a _Monkey_, an _Ape_, and a _Man_," published by
the Royal Society in 1699, is, indeed, a work of remarkable merit, and
has, in some respects, served as a model to subsequent inquirers. This
"Pygmie," Tyson tells us, "was brought from Angola, in Africa; but was
first taken a great deal higher up the country"; its hair "was of a
coal-black colour, and strait," and "when it went as a quadruped on all
four, 'twas awkwardly; not placing the palm of the hand flat to the
ground, but it walk'd upon its knuckles, as I observed it to do when
weak and had not strength enough to support its body."--"From the top of
the head to the heel of the foot, in a strait line, it measured
twenty-six inches."
[Illustration: FIGS. 3 and 4.--The "Pygmie" reduced from Tyson's figures
1 and 2, 1699.]
These characters, even without Tyson's good figures (Figs. 3 and 4),
would have been sufficient to prove his "Pygmie" to be a young
Chimpanzee. But the opportunity of examining the skeleton of the very
animal Tyson anatomised having most unexpectedly presented itself to me,
I am able to bear independent testimony to its being a veritable
_Troglodytes niger_,[6] though still very young. Although fully
appreciating the resemblances between his Pygmie and Man, Tyson by no
means overlooked the differences between the two, and he concludes his
memoir by summing up first, the points in which "the Ourang-outang or
Pygmie more resembled a Man than Apes and Monkeys do," under forty-seven
distinct heads; and then giving, in thirty-four similar brief
paragraphs, the respects in which "the Ourang-outang or Pygmie differ'd
from a Man and resembled more the Ape and Monkey kind."
After a careful survey of the literature of the subject extant in his
time, our author arrives at the conclusion that his "Pygmie" is
identical neither with the Orangs of Tulpius and Bontius, nor with the
Quoias Morrou of Dapper (or rather of Tulpius), the Barris of d'Arcos,
nor with the Pongo of Battell; but that it is a species of ape probably
identical with the Pygmies of the Ancients, and, says Tyson, though it
"does so much resemble _a Man_ in many of its parts, more than any of
the ape kind, or any other animal in the world, that I know of: yet by
no means do I look upon it as the product of a _mixt_ generation--'tis a
_Brute-Animal sui generis_, and a particular _species of Ape_."
The name of "Chimpanzee," by which one of the African Apes is now so
well known, appears to have come into use in the first half of the
eighteenth century, but the only important addition made, in that
period, to our acquaintance with the man-like apes of Africa is
contained in "A New Voyage to Guinea," by William Smith, which bears the
date 1744.