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HEADS AND TALES.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
[Illustration: The Tasmanian Wolf. (_Thylacinus Cynocephalus._)]
HEADS AND TALES;
OR,
ANECDOTES AND STORIES OF QUADRUPEDS
AND OTHER BEASTS,
CHIEFLY CONNECTED WITH INCIDENTS IN THE
HISTORIES OF MORE OR LESS DISTINGUISHED MEN.
COMPILED AND SELECTED BY
ADAM WHITE,
LATE ASSISTANT IN THE ZOOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT, BRITISH MUSEUM.
Second Edition.
LONDON:
JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET.
MDCCCLXX.
PREFACE.
In this work, a part of which is, so far as it extends, a careful
compilation from an extensive series of books, the great order mammalia,
or, rather, a few of its subjects, is treated anecdotically. The
connexion of certain animals with man, and the readiness with which man
can subdue even the largest of the mammalia, are very curious subjects
of thought. The dog and horse are our special friends and associates;
they seem to understand us, and we get very much attached to them. The
cat or the cow, again, possess a different degree of attachment, and
have "heads and hearts" less susceptible of this education than the
first mentioned. The anecdotes in this book will clearly show facts of
this nature. In the Letter of the Gorilla, under an appearance of
exaggeration, will be found many facts of its history. We have a strong
belief that natural history, written as White of Selborne did his Letter
of Timothy the Tortoise, would be very enticing and interesting to young
people. To make birds and other animals relate their stories has been
done sometimes, and generally with success. There are anecdotes hinging,
however, on animals which have more to do with man than the other
mammals referred to in the little story. These stories we have felt to
be very interesting when they occur in biographies of great men. Cowper
and his Hares, Huygens and his Sparrow, are tales--at least the
former--full of interesting matter on the history of the lower animal,
but are of most value as showing the influence on the man who amused
himself by taming them. We like to know that the great Duke, after
getting down from his horse Copenhagen, which carried him through the
whole battle of Waterloo, clapped him on the neck, when the war-charger
kicked out, as if untired.
We could have added greatly to this book, especially in the part of
jests, puns, or cases of _double entendre_. The few selected may
suffice. The so-called conversations of "the Ettrick Shepherd" are full
of matter of this kind, treated by "Christopher North" with a happy
combination of rare power of description and apt exaggeration of detail,
often highly amusing. One or two instances are given here, such as the
Fox-hunt and the Whale. The intention of this book is primarily to be
amusing; but it will be strange if it do not instruct as well. There is
much in it that is _true_ of the habits of mammalia. These, with birds,
are likely to interest young people generally, more than anecdotes of
members of orders like fish, insects, or molluscs, lower in the scale,
though often possessing marvellous instincts, the accounts of which form
intensely interesting reading to those who are fond of seeing or hearing
of "the works of the Lord," and who "take pleasure" in them.
CONTENTS.
MAMMALIA.[1]
PAGE
MAN 1
Gainsborough's Joke--Skull of Julius Caesar when a boy 2
Sir David Wilkie's simplicity about Babies 3
James Montgomery translates into verse a description of
Man, after the manner of Linnaeus 4
Addison and Sir Richard Steele's Description of Gimcrack
the Collector 5
MONKEYS 9
The Gorilla and its Story 9
The Orang-Utan 11
The Chimpanzee 12
Letter of Mr Waterton 20
Mr Mitchell and the Young Chimpanzee 22
Lady Anne Barnard pleads for the Baboons 24
S. Bisset and his Trained Monkeys 25
Lord Byron's Pets 26
The Ettrick Shepherd's Monkey 27
The Findhorn Fisherman and the Monkey 29
"We ha'e seen the _Enemy_!" 29
The French Marquis and his Monkey 30
George IV. and Happy Jerry.--Mr Cross's Rib-nosed
Baboon at Exeter Change 31
The Young Lady's pet Monkey and the poor Parrot 33
Monkeys "poor relations" 34
Sydney Smith on Monkeys 34
Mrs Colin Mackenzie on the Apes at Simla 35
The Aye-Aye, or Cheiromys of Madagascar 36
BATS 38
One of Captain Cook's Sailors sees a Fox-Bat, and describes
it as a devil 39
Fox Bats (_with a Plate_) 41
Dr Mayerne and his Balsam of Bats 47
HEDGEHOG 48
Robert Southey to his Critics 48
MOLE 49
Mole, cause of Death of William III. 49
BROWN BEAR 56
The Austrian General and the Bear--"Back, rascal, I
am a general!" 58
Lord Byron's Bear at Cambridge 59
Charles Dickens on Bear's Grease and Bear-keepers 59
A Bearable Pun 60
A Shaved Bear 61
POLAR BEAR 61
General History and Anecdotes of Polar Bear, as observed
on recent Arctic Expeditions (_with a Plate_) 61
Nelson and the Polar Bear 67
A Clever Polar Bear 67
Captain Ommaney and the Polar Bear 70
RACCOON 71
"A Gone Coon" 71
BADGER 71
Hugh Miller sees the "Drawing of the Badger" 72
The Laird of Balnamoon and the Brock 75
FERRET 75
Collins and the Rat-catcher, with the Ferret 76
POLE-CAT 76
Fox and the Poll-Cat 77
DOG 77
Phrases about Dogs 77
Cowper's Dog 79
Cowper and his dog Beau 81
Burns's "Twa Dogs" 81
Dog of Assyrian Monument 86
Bishop Blomfield bitten by a Dog 88
Sydney Smith's Remark on it 88
Bishop of Bristol--"Puppies never see till they are nine
days old" 88
Mrs Browning, the Poetess, and her dog Flush 89
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart., and his dog Speaker 93
Lord Byron and his dog Boatswain 94
Lady's reason for calling her dog Perchance 96
Collins the Artist and his dog Prinny--the faithful
Model 96
Soldier and Dog 97
Bark and Bite!--Curran on Lord Clare and his Dog 98
Mrs Drew and the two Dogs 98
Gainsborough and his Wife and their Dogs 100
Sir William Gell's Dog, which was said to speak 101
The Duke of Gordon's Wolf-hounds 102
Frederick the Great and his Italian Greyhounds 104
The Dog and the French Murderers 104
Hannah More on Garrick's Dog 105
Rev. Robert Hall and the Dog 106
A Queen (Henrietta Maria) and her Lap-Dog 106
The Clever Dog that belonged to the Hunters of Polmood 107
The Irish Clergyman and the Dogs 108
Washington Irving and the Dog 108
Douglas Jerrold and his Dog 109
Sheridan and the Dog 109
Charles Lamb and his dog "Dash" 110
French Dogs of Louis XII. 110
Martin Luther observes a Dog at Lintz 111
Poor Dog at the Grotta del Cane 111
Dog a Postman and Carrier 113
South and Sherlock--Dog-matic 113
General Moreau and his Greyhound 113
Duke of Norfolk and his Spaniels 114
Lord North and the Dog 115
Perthes derives Hints from his Dog 115
Peter the Great and his dog Lisette 116
The Light Company's Poodle and Sir F. Ponsonby 118
Admiral Rodney and his dog Loup 119
Ruddiman and his dog Rascal 119
Mrs Schimmelpenninck and the Dogs 120
Sir Walter Scott and his Dogs 122
Sheridan on the Dog-Tax 123
Sydney Smith dislikes Dogs.--An ingenious way of getting
rid of them 124
Sydney Smith on Dogs 125
Sydney Smith.--"Newfoundland Dog that breakfasted
on Parish Boys" 126
Robert Southey on his Dogs 126
A Dog that was a good judge of Elocution.--Mr True
and his Pupil 127
Dog that tried to please a Crying Child 128
Horace Walpole's pet dog Rosette 128
Horace Walpole.--Arrival of his dog Tonton 129
Horace Walpole.--Death of his dog Tonton 130
Archbishop Whateley and his Dogs 131
Archbishop Whately on Dogs 132
Sir David Wilkie.--A Dog Rose 133
Ulysses and his Dog 133
WOLF 135
Polson and the Last Wolf in Sutherlandshire 135
"If the tail break, you'll find that" 137
FOX 138
An Enthusiastic Fox-hunting Surgeon 138
Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, on the Pleasures of Fox-hunting,
and the gratification of the Fox 139
Arctic Foxes converted into Postmen, with Anecdotes
(_with a plate_) 142
JACKAL 148
Burke on the Jackal and Tiger 149
CAT 149
Jeremy Bentham and his pet cat "Sir John Langborn 150
S. Bisset and his Musical Cats 152
Constant, Chateaubriand, and their Cats 153
Liston, the Surgeon, and his Cat 153
The Banker Mitchell's Antipathy to Kittens 154
James Montgomery and his Cats 155
David Ritchie's Cat 157
Sir Walter Scott's Visit to the Black Dwarf 157
Southey, the Poet, and his Cats 158
Archbishop Whateley and the Cat that used to ring the
Bell 160
TIGER AND LION 161
Bussapa, the Tiger-slayer, and the Tiger 162
John Hunter and the Dead Tiger 164
Mrs Mackenzie on the Indian's regard and awe for the
Tiger 165
Jolly Jack-tar on Lion and Tiger 166
Androcles and the Lion 167
Sir George Davis and the Lion 170
Canova's Lions and the Child 171
Admiral Napier and the Lion in the Tower 173
Old Lady and the Beasts on the Mound 173
SEALS 174
Dr Adam Clarke on Shetland Seals 175
Dr Edmonstone and the Shetland Seals 176
The Walrus or Morse (_with a Plate_) 182
KANGAROO 188
Charles Lamb on its Peculiarities 188
Captain Cooke's Sailor and the first Kangaroo seen 189
Charles Lamb on Kangaroos having Purses in front 189
Kangaroo Cooke 189
TIGER WOLF 190
SQUIRREL, &c. 194
Jekyll on a Squirrel 195
Pets of some of the Parisian Revolutionary Butchers 195
Sir George Back and the poor Lemming 196
McDougall and Arctic Lemming 197
RATS AND MICE 198
Duke of Wellington and Musk-Rat 200
Lady Eglinton and the Rats 200
General Douglas and the Rats 201
Hanover Rats 202
Irishman Shooting Rats 203
James Watt and the Rat's Whiskers 204
Gray the Poet compares Poet-Laureate to Rat-catcher 204
Jeremy Bentham and the Mice 205
Robert Burns and the Field Mouse 206
Fuller on Destructive Field Mice 208
Baron Von Trenck and the Mouse in Prison 209
Alexander Wilson, the American Ornithologist, and the
Mouse 211
HARES, RABBITS, GUINEA-PIG 212
William Cowper on his Hares 213
Lord Norbury on the Exaggeration of a Hare-Shooter 220
Duke of L. prefers Friends to Hares 221
S. Bisset and his Trained Hare and Turtle 221
Lady Anne Barnard on a Family of Rabbits all blind of
one eye 222
Thomas Fuller on Norfolk Rabbits 222
Dr Chalmers and the Guinea-Pig 223
SLOTH 224
Sydney Smith on the Sloth--a Comparison 224
THE GREAT ANT-EATER (_with a Plate_) 225
ELEPHANT 229
Lord Clive--Elephant or Equivalent? 230
Canning on the Elephant and his Trunk 232
Sir R. Phillips and Jelly made of Ivory Dust 233
J. T. Smith and the Elephant 234
Sydney Smith on the Elephant and Tailor 235
Elephant's Skin--a teacher put down 236
FOSSIL PACHYDERMATA 236
Cuvier's Enthusiasm over Fossils 236
SOW 238
"There's a hantle o' miscellaneous eatin' aboot a Pig" 238
"Pig-Sticking at Chicago" 238
Monument to a Pig at Luneberg 239
WILD BOAR (_with a Plate_) 239
THE RIVER PIG (_with a Plate_) 245
S. Bisset and his Learned Pig 250
Quixote Bowles fond of Pigs 251
On Jekyll's treading on a small Pig 251
Good enough for a Pig 251
Gainsborough's Pigs 252
Theodore Hook and the Litter of Pigs 253
Lady Hardwicke's Pig--her Bailiff 253
Pigs and Silver Spoon 253
Sydney Smith on Beautiful Pigs 254
Joseph Sturge, when a boy, and the Pigs 255
RHINOCEROS 229
The Lord Keeper Guildford and the Rhinoceros in the
City of London 230
HORSE 256
Horse shot under Albert 256
Bell-Rock Lighthouse Horse 257
Edmund Burke and the Horse 257
David Garrick and his Horse, "A horse! a horse! my
kingdom for a horse!" 258
Bernard Gilpin's Horses stolen and recovered 260
The Herald and George III.'s Horse 261
Rev. Rowland Hill and his Horse 261
Holcroft on the Horse 263
Lord Mansfield, his Joke about a Horse 267
Sir John Moore and his Horse at Corunna 268
Neither Horses nor Children can explain their Complaints 269
Horses with Names 270
Rennie the Engineer and the Horse Old Jack 270
Sydney Smith and his Horses 271
Sydney Smith.--He drugs his Domestic Animals 273
Horseback, an Absent Clergyman 273
Judge Story and the Names he gave his Horses 274
Short-tailed and Long-tailed Horses at Livery, difference
of Charge 275
ASS AND ZEBRA 276
Coleridge on the Ass 276
Collins and the old Donkey at Odell 276
Gainsborough kept one to Study from 277
Irishman on the Ramsgate Donkeys 278
Douglas Jerrold and the Ass's Foal 278
The Judge and the Barrister 279
Ass that loved Poetry 279
Warren Hastings and the refractory Donkey 279
Northcote, an Angel at an Ass 281
Sydney Smith's Donkey with Jeffrey on his back 281
Sydney Smith on the Sagacity of the Ass 283
Sydney Smith's Deers, how he introduced them into
his Grounds to gratify Visitors 284
Asses' Duty Free 284
Thackeray on Egyptian Donkey 285
Zebra, a Frenchman's _double-entendre_ 287
CAMELS 287
Captain William Peel, R.N., on Camel 287
Captain in Royal Navy measures the progress of the
Ship of the Desert 289
Lord Metcalfe on a Camel when a Boy 290
RED DEER 291
Earl of Dalhousie and the ferocious Stag 291
The French Count and the Stag 293
FALLOW DEER 294
Venison Fat, Reynolds and the Gourmand 294
Goethe on Stag-trench at Frankfort-on-Maine 294
GIRAFFE 295
"Fancy Two Yards of Sore Throat!" 295
SHEEP AND GOAT 295
How many Legs has a Sheep? 296
Goethe on Roos's Etchings of Sheep 296
Lord Cockburn and the Sheep 298
Erskine's Sheep--an Eye to the Woolsack 298
Sandy Wood and his Pet Sheep and Raven 298
General Carnac and She-goat 299
John Hunter and the Shawl-goat 300
Commodore Keppel _beards_ the Dey of Algiers 303
OX 304
Irish Bulls 304
A great Calf! "The more he sucked the greater Calf he
grew!" 304
Veal _ad nauseam!_ too much of a good thing 304
James Boswell should confine himself to the Cow 305
Rev. Adam Clarke and his Bullock Pat 305
Samuel Foote and the Cows pulling the Bell of Worcester
College 306
The General's Cow at Plymouth 308
Gilpin's Love of the Picturesque carried out--a reason
for keeping three Cows 308
King James on a Cow getting over the Border 309
Duke of Montague and his Hospital for Old Cows and
Horses 309
Philip IV. of Spain in the Bull-ring 310
Sydney Smith and his "Universal Scratcher" 311
Rev. Augustus Toplady on the Future State of Animals--the
Rev. William Bull 312
Windham on the Feelings of a Baited Bull 313
WHALE 315
A Porpoise not at Home 315
Whalebone 315
"What's to become o' the puir Whales?" 316
Very like a Whale! 316
Christopher North on the Whale 316
FOOTNOTES:
[1] There are many anecdotes in this book not included in this list,
which gives however, the principal.
HEADS AND TALES.
MAN.
In this collection, like Linnaeus, we begin with man as undoubtedly an
animal, as opposed to a vegetable or mineral. Like Professor Owen, we
are inclined to fancy he is well entitled to separate rank from even the
Linnaean order, _Primates_, and to have more systematic honour conferred
on him than what Cuvier allowed him. That great French naturalist placed
man in a section separate from his four-handed order, _Quadrumana_, and,
from his two hands and some other qualities, enrolled our race in an
order, _Bimana_. Surely the ancients surpassed many modern naturalists
of the Lamarckian school, who would derive him from an ourang, a
chimpanzee, or a gorilla. One of them has nobly said--
"Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri."
Our own Sir William Hamilton, in a few powerful words has condensed what
will ever be, we are thankful to suppose, the general idea of most men,
be they naturalists or not, that mind and soul have much to distinguish
us from every other animal:--
"What man holds of matter does not make up his personality. Man is not
an organism. He is an intelligence served by organs. _They are_ HIS,
_not_ HE."
As a mere specimen, we subjoin two or three anecdotes, although the
species, _Homo sapiens_, has supplied, and might supply, many volumes of
anecdotes touching on his whims and peculiarities. As a good example of
the Scottish variety, who is there that does not know Dean Ramsay's
"Reminiscences?" Surely each nation requires a similar judicious
selection. Mr Punch, especially when aided by his late admirable artist,
John Leech, shows seemingly that John Bull and his family are as
distinct from the French, as the French are from the Yankees.
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH THE ARTIST, AND THE TAILOR.
Gainsborough, the painter, was very ready-witted. His biographer[2]
records the following anecdote of him as very likely to be authentic.
The great artist occasionally made sketches from an honest old tailor,
of the name of Fowler, who had a picturesque countenance and silver-gray
locks. On the chimney-piece of his painting-room, among other
curiosities, was a beautiful preparation of an infant _cranium_,
presented to the painter by his old friend, Surgeon Cruickshanks.
Fowler, without moving his position, continually peered at it askance
with inquisitive eye. "Ah! Master Fowler," said the painter, "that is a
mighty curiosity." "What might it be, sir, if I may be so bold?" "A
_whale's eye_," replied Gainsborough. "Oh! not so; never say so, Muster
Gainsborough. Laws! sir, it is a little child's skull!" "You have hit
upon it," said the wag. "Why, Fowler, you are a witch! But what will you
think when I tell you that it is the skull of _Julius Caesar_ when he was
a little boy?" "Do you say so!" exclaimed Fowler, "what a phenomenon!"
This reminds us of a similar story told of a countryman, who was shown
the so-called skull of Oliver Cromwell at the museum in Oxford, and
expressed his delight by saying how gratifying it was to see skulls of
great men at different ages, for he had just seen at Bath the skull of
the Protector when a youth!
SIR DAVID WILKIE AND THE BABY.
A very popular novelist and author of the present day tells the
following anecdote of the simplicity of Sir David Wilkie, with regard to
his knowledge of _infant_ human nature:--
On the birth of his first son, at the beginning of 1824, William
Collins,[3] the great artist, requested Sir David Wilkie to become one
of the sponsors for his child.[4] The painter's first criticism on his
future godson is worth recording from its simplicity. Sir David, whose
studies of human nature extended to everything but _infant_ human
nature, had evidently been refreshing his faculties for the occasion, by
taxing his boyish recollections of puppies and kittens; for, after
looking intently into the child's eyes as it was held up for his
inspection, he exclaimed to the father, with serious astonishment and
satisfaction, "He _sees_!"
MAN DEFINED SOMEWHAT IN THE LINNAEAN MANNER.
One who is partial to the Linnaean mode of characterising objects of
natural history has amused himself with drawing up the following
definition of man:--"_Simia sine cauda; pedibus posticis ambulans;
gregarius, omnivorus, inquietus, mendax, furax, rapax, salax, pugnax,
artium variarum capax, animalium reliquorum hostis, sui ipsius inimicus
acerrimus._"
Montgomery translated the description thus:--
"Man is an animal unfledged,
A monkey with his tail abridged;
A thing that walks on spindle legs,
With bones as brittle, sir, as eggs;
His body, flexible and limber,
And headed with a knob of timber;
A being frantic and unquiet,
And very fond of beef and riot;
Rapacious, lustful, rough, and martial,
To lies and lying scoundrels partial!
By nature form'd with splendid parts
To rise in science--shine in arts;
Yet so confounded cross and vicious,
A mortal foe to all his species!
His own best _friend_, and you must know,
His own worst _enemy_ by being so!"[5]
ADDISON AND STEELE ON SOME OF THE PECULIARITIES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY
COLLECTORS OF THE DAY.
In one of the early volumes of _Chambers's Edinburgh Journal_, there was
a very curious paper entitled "Nat Phin." Although considerably
exaggerated, no one who had the happiness of knowing the learned,
amiable, and excellent Dr Patrick Neill, could fail to recognise, in the
transposed title, an amusing description of his love of natural history
pets, zoological and botanical. The fun of the paper is that "Nat" gets
married, and, coming home one day from his office, finds that his young
wife has caused the gardener to clear out his ponds of tadpoles and
zoophytes.
Addison or Sir Richard Steele, or both of them, in the following paper
of the _Tatler_ (No. 221, Sept. 7, 1710), has given one of those quietly
satiric pictures of many a well-known man of the day, some Petiver or
Hans Sloane. The widow Gimcrack's letter is peculiarly racy. Although
old books, the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ still furnish rare material to
many a popular magazine writer of the day, who sometimes does little
more than dilute a paper in these and other rare repertories of the
style and wit of a golden age. We meditated offering various extracts
from Swift and Daniel Defoe; but our space limits us to one, and the
following may for the present suffice.
"_From my own Apartment, September 6._
"As I was this morning going out of my house, a little boy in a black
coat delivered me the following letter. Upon asking who he was, he told
me that he belonged to my Lady Gimcrack. I did not at first recollect
the name, but, upon inquiry, I found it to be the widow of Sir Nicholas,
whose legacy I lately gave some account of to the world. The letter ran
thus:--
"'MR BICKERSTAFF,--I hope you will not be surprised to receive a letter
from the widow Gimcrack. You know, sir, that I have lately lost a very
whimsical husband, who, I find, by one of your last week's papers, was
not altogether a stranger to you. When I married this gentleman, he had
a very handsome estate; but, upon buying a set of microscopes, he was
chosen a _Fellow of the Royal Society; from which time I do not remember
ever to have heard him speak as other people did_, or talk in a manner
that any of his family could understand him. He used, however, to pass
away his time very innocently in conversation with several members of
that learned body: for which reason I never advised him against their
company for several years, until at last I found his brain quite turned
with their discourses. The first symptoms which he discovered of his
being a _virtuoso_, as you call him, poor man! was about fifteen years
ago; when he gave me positive orders to turn off an old weeding woman,
that had been employed in the family for some years. He told me, at the
same time, that there was no such thing in nature as a weed, and that it
was his design to let his garden produce what it pleased; so that, you
may be sure, it makes a very pleasant show as it now lies. About the
same time he took a humour to ramble up and down the country, and would
often bring home with him his pockets full of moss and pebbles. This,
you may be sure, gave me a heavy heart; though, at the same time, I must
needs say, he had the character of a very honest man, notwithstanding
he was reckoned a little weak, until he began to sell his estate, and
buy those strange baubles that you have taken notice of. Upon
midsummerday last, as he was walking with me in the fields, he saw a
very odd-coloured butterfly just before us. I observed that he
immediately changed colour, like a man that is surprised with a piece of
good luck; and telling me that it was what he had looked for above these
twelve years, he threw off his coat, and followed it. I lost sight of
them both in less than a quarter of an hour; but my husband continued
the chase over hedge and ditch until about sunset; at which time, as I
was afterwards told, he caught the butterfly as she rested herself upon
a cabbage, near five miles from the place where he first put her up. He
was here lifted from the ground by some passengers in a very fainting
condition, and brought home to me about midnight. His violent exercise
threw him into a fever, which grew upon him by degrees, and at last
carried him off. In one of the intervals of his distemper he called to
me, and, after having excused himself for running out his estate, he
told me that he had always been more industrious to improve his mind
than his fortune, and that his family must rather value themselves upon
his memory as he was a wise man than a rich one. He then told me that it
was a custom among the Romans for a man to give his slaves their liberty
when he lay upon his death-bed. I could not imagine what this meant,
until, after having a little composed himself, he ordered me to bring
him a flea which he had kept for several months in a chain, with a
design, as he said, to give it its manumission. This was done
accordingly. He then made the will, which I have since seen printed in
your works word for word. Only I must take notice that you have omitted
the codicil, in which he left a large _concha veneris_, as it is there
called, to a _Member of the Royal Society_, who was often with him in
his sickness, and _assisted him in his will_. And now, sir, I come to
the chief business of my letter, which is to desire your friendship and
assistance in the disposal of those many rarities and curiosities which
lie upon my hands. If you know any one that has an occasion for a parcel
of dried spiders, I will sell them a pennyworth. I could likewise let
any one have a bargain of cockle-shells. I would also desire your advice
whether I had best sell my beetles in a lump or by retail. The gentleman
above mentioned, who was my husband's friend, would have me make an
auction of all his goods, and is now drawing up a catalogue of every
particular for that purpose, with the two following words in great
letters over the head of them, Auctio Gimcrackiana. But, upon talking
with him, I begin to suspect he is as mad as poor Sir Nicholas was. Your
advice in all these particulars will be a great piece of charity to,
Sir, your most humble servant,
"'ELIZABETH GIMCRACK.'
"I shall answer the foregoing letter, and give the widow my best advice,
as soon as I can find out chapmen for the wares which she has to put
off."
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. By the late George Williams
Fulcher. Edited by his Son. P. 157.
[3] Memoir of the Life of William Collins, R.A. By W. Wilkie Collins.
I., p. 235.
[4] The future author of "The Woman in White" and "The Dead Secret," and
many other works of celebrity.
[5] Memoirs of James Montgomery. By Holland and Everett. I., p. 283.
MONKEYS.
THE GORILLA AND ITS STORY.
In the British Museum, in handsome glass cases, and on the floors of the
three first rooms at the top of the stairs, may be seen the largest
collection of the skins and skeletons of quadrupeds ever brought
together. In the third, or principal room, will be found a nearly
complete series of the QUADRUMANA or four-handed Mammalia. Monkeys are
_quadrumanous mammalia_. The resemblance of these animals to men is most
conspicuous, in the largest of them, such as the gorilla, orang-utan,
chimpanzee, and the long-armed or gibbous apes. Such resemblance is most
distant in the ferocious dog-faced baboons of Africa, the _Cynocephali_
of the ancients. It is softened off, but not effaced, in the pretty
little countenances of those dwarf pets from South America, the
ouistities or marmosets, and other species of new-world monkeys, some of
which are not larger than a squirrel.
They are well called MONKEYS, Monnikies, Mannikies--little men, "_Simiae
quasi bestiae hominibus similes_," "monkeys, as if beasts resembling
man," or "mon," as the word man is pronounced in pure _Doric_ Saxon,
whether in York or Peebles.
"Monkey! you very degraded little brute, how much you resemble us!" said
old Ennius, without ever fancying that the day would come when some men
would regard their own race as little better than highly-advanced
monkeys.
Let us never for a moment rest in such fallacious theories, or accept
the belief of Darwin and Huxley, with a few active agitating disciples,
that animals, and even plants, may pass into each other.
"I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries; ...
Not only cunning casts in clay;
Let science prove we are, and then
What matters science unto men,
At least to me! I would not stay:
Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action, like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things."
--_In Memoriam_, cxix.
Darwin and Huxley cannot change nature. They may change their minds and
opinions, as their fathers did before them. It is, we suspect, only the
old heathen materialism cropping out,--
"Our little systems have their day--
They have their day and cease to be.
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord! art more than they."
--_In Memoriam._
No artists or authors have ever pictured or described monkeys like Sir
Edwin Landseer and his brother Thomas. Surely a new edition of the
_Monkeyana_ is wanted for the rising generation. Oliver Goldsmith, that
great writer, who was most feeble in knowledge of natural history from
almost total ignorance of the subject, over which he threw the graces of
his charming style, noticed, as remarkable, that in countries "where the
men are barbarous and stupid, the brutes are the most active and
sagacious." He continues, that it is in the torrid tracts, inhabited by
barbarians, that animals are found with instinct so nearly approaching
reason. Both in Africa and America, accordingly, he tells us, "the
savages suppose monkeys to be men; idle, slothful, rational beings,
capable of speech and conversation, but obstinately dumb, for fear of
being compelled to labour."
For the present, I shall suppose that the gorilla, largest of all the
apes, can not only speak, but write; and is speaking and writing to an
orang-utan of Borneo. Even a Lamarckian will allow this to be within the
range of possibility. Were it possible to get Gay or Cowper to write a
new set of fables, animals, in the days of postoffices and letters,
would become, like the age, epistolary. But a word on the imaginary
correspondent.
The orang, as the reader knows, is the great red-haired "Man of the
Woods," as the name may be rendered in English. My old friend, Mr Alfred
Wallace, lately in New Guinea, and the adjoining parts, collecting
natural history subjects, and making all kinds of valuable observations
and surveys, sent to Europe most of the magnificent specimens of this
"ugly beast" now in the museum. He has detailed its habits and history
in an able account, published some years ago in "The Annals and Magazine
of Natural History."
Its home seems to be the fine forests which cover many parts of the
coast of Borneo. The home of the gorilla and chimpanzee are in the
tropical forests of the coasts of Western Africa.
There would seem to be but three or four well established _species_ of
these apes, though there are, as in man and most created beings, some
marked or decided varieties. These apes are altogether _quadrupeds_,
adapted for a life among trees. The late Charles Waterton, of Walton
Hall, whom I deem it an honour to have known for many years, personally
and in his writings, has well shown this in his "Essays on Natural
History." Professor Owen, with his osteologies, and old Tyson, with his
anatomies, have each demonstrated that--draw what inferences the
followers of Mr Darwin may choose--monkeys are not men, but quadrupeds.
The structure of chimpanzee, orang, and gorilla considerably resembles
that of man, but so more distantly does a frog's, so does Scheuchzer's
fossil amphibian in the museum, so does a squirrel's, so does a
parrot's. Yet, because parrots, squirrels, frogs, and asses have skulls,
a pelvis, and fore-arms, they are _not_ men any more than fish are.
Linnaeus has given the _real_ specific, the _real_ class, order, and
generic character of man, unique as a species, as a genus, as an order,
or as a class, as even the greatest comparative anatomist of England
regards him; "Nosce teipsum:" "[Greek: Gnothi seauton]"--KNOW THYSELF.
Man alone expects a hereafter. He is immortal, and anticipates, hopes
for, or dreads a resurrection. Melancholy it is that he alone, as an
American writer curiously remarks, collects bodies of men of _one_ blood
to fight with each other. He alone can become a _drunkard_.
The reader must leave rhapsody, and may now be reminded, in explanation
of allusions in the following letter, that the arm of Dr Livingstone,
the African traveller, was crushed and crunched by the bite and "chaw"
of a lion. He will also please to notice, that the skeleton of the
gorilla in the museum has the left arm broken by some dreadful accident.
This injury may _possibly_ have been caused by a fall when young, or
more probably by the empoisoned bite of a larger gorilla, or of a
tree-climbing Leopard. So much may be premised before giving a letter,
supposed to be intercepted on its way between the Gaboon and London, and
London and Borneo, opened at St Martin's-le-Grand, and detained as
unpaid.
"I was born in a large baobab tree, on the west coast of Africa, not
very far from Calabar. We gorillas are good time-keepers, rise early and
go to bed early, guided infallibly by the sun. But though our family has
been in existence at least six thousand years, we have no chronology,
and care not a straw about our grandfathers. I suppose I had a
grandmother, but I never took _any_ interest in any but very close
relationships.
"We never toiled for our daily food, and are not idle like these lazy
black fellows who hold their palavers near us, and whom I, for my part,
heartily despise. They cannot climb a tree, as we do, although they can
talk to each other, and make one another slaves. At least they so treat
their countrymen far off where the fine sweet plantains grow, and some
other juicy tit-bits, the memory of which makes my mouth water. These
fellows have ugly wives, not nearly so big-mouthed as ours, without our
noble bony ridge, small ears, and exalted presence. They are actually
forced to walk erect, and their fore-legs seldom touch the ground,
except in the case of piccanninies. These little creatures crawl on the
ground, are much paler when born, and are then perfectly helpless; and
have no hair except on their heads, whereas our beautiful young are
fine and hairy, and can swing among the branches, shortly after birth,
nearly as well as their parents. When I was very young, I could soon
help myself to fruits which abound on our trees.
"Have you dates, plantains, and soursops--so sweet--at Sarawak, Master
Redhair? We have, and all kinds of them. I should like, for a variety,
to taste yours. Mind you send me some of the _durian_.[6] Make haste and
send it, for Wallace's description makes my mouth water.
"I have told you our little ones soon learn to help themselves, whereas
I have seen the piccaninnies of the blacks nursed by their mothers till
many rainy seasons had come and gone. I really think nothing of the
talking blacks who live near us. They put on bits of coloured rags, not
nearly so bright, so regular, nor so _contrasting_ as the feathers of
our birds.
"Beautifully coloured are the green touraco and the purple
plantain-eater, a rascally bird! who eats some of our finest plantains,
and has bitten holes in many a one I thought to get entirely to myself.
Why, our parrots beat these West-African negroes to sticks! Even our
common gray parrot, so prettily scaled with gray, and with the red
feathers under his tail, is more natural than these blacks, with their
dirty-white, yellow, blue, green, and red rags.
"Besides, that gray parrot beats them hollow both in its voice and in
the way it imitates. Do you know that when I have been giving my quick
short bark, to tell that I am not well pleased, I have heard one of
these fellows near me actually make me startle--its bark was so like to
that of one of our kind! I cannot bear the blacks! I have had a grudge
against them since some little urchins shot at me when I was young, and
made my hand bleed. How it bled! My mother, with whom I had been, kept
out of the way of these blackguards, but I was playing with another
little gorilla, and forgot to keep a look-out. I have kept a good
look-out ever since I got _that_ wound, I assure you. I licked it often,
and so did my mother with her delicious mouth. It soon left off bleeding
and healed. We gorillas have no brandy, no whisky, no wine, not even
small beer, to inflame our blood. We sleep, too, among the trees, clear
off the ground, where there are dangerous vapours, so that we are free
from all miasmata. West Africa is my lovely home, and I am big and
beautifully pot-bellied. It is the home of the large-eared chimpanzee, a
near relative of ours, though we never marry. He is an active fellow,
with rather large vulgar-looking ears; while mine, though I ought not to
say so, are beautifully small, and denote my more exalted birth. Master
Chimpanzee needs all his ears, for he is not so strong as I, and as you
will hear, we anthropoids have enemies in our trees, just as you perhaps
have, Master Redhair. We are both cautious of getting on the ground, and
when there, I assure you I keep a sharp look-out.
"I have told you of one adventure I had in my youth, and now listen to
another which I have not forgotten to this day. My left arm aches now as
I think of it.
"As I was one day gambolling with another playfellow in a large tree,
with great branches standing out from the trunk, and at a good height
from the ground, my companion, another young gorilla, but with smaller
mouth, larger nose, and other features uglier than mine, suddenly
shrieked, and looked frightened and angry. No sooner had I noticed him
than my whole frame was shaken. I was seized by two paws in the small of
my back--a very painful part to be dug into--by ten hooked claws, nearly
as long as tenpenny nails, but horribly sharp and hooked.--Oh my arm!
"I tried to turn round, and there was a most ferocious leopard growling
at me. I tried to bite, and to scratch his eyes out, but the pain in the
small of my back made me quite giddy. The spotted scoundrel seized my
left arm--how it aches!--and gave me a _crunch_ or two. I hear, I feel
the teeth against my bones as I write. My whole body is full of pain.
"My mother came and released me. She was large, handsome, and
well-to-do, with _such_ long and strong arms, and with a magnificent
bulging and pouting mouth. In those days of my infancy I used to fancy I
should like to try to take as large a bite of a plantain as she could. I
tried twice or thrice, but could only squash a tenth of the juice of the
fruit into my mouth. She had glorious white teeth. Her grin clearly
frightened the leopard, as well as a pinch she gave him in the 'scruff'
of the neck with one of her hands, while with the other she caught hold
of his tail and made him yell. How he roared! He fell off the branch on
to another; but soon, like all the cats, recovered his hold and jumped
down to the ground, when he skulked away with his tail behind him.
"I must really leave off, warned both by my paper and your impatience.
Well, I grew stronger and bigger every day, and swung by one arm almost
as well as the rest did with their two. I got, in fact, so strong on my
hind feet, that my toes were actually in time thicker than those of any
of my race. It is well, my dear Orang, to use what you have left you,
and to try as soon as possible to forget what has been taken from you.
"... Look at my portrait, I am as strong, and as bony, and as bonnie, as
any gorilla. But I begin to boast, so I will leave off."
* * * * *
No doubt that gorilla's injured arm affected its habits and its activity
every day of its life. The broken arm, never set by some gorilla surgeon
of celebrity, formed a highly important feature in its biography.
Reader! when next thou visitest the noble Museum in Bloomsbury, look at
the skeleton of that gorilla, whose probable story Arachnophilus hath
tried to give thee, and remember that both skin and skeleton were
exhibited there before Du Chaillu became "a lion."
The gorilla is a native of West Africa. It is closely allied to the
chimpanzee, but grows to a larger size, and has many striking anatomical
characters and external marks to distinguish it. It is certainly much
dreaded by the natives on the banks of the Gaboon, and, doubtless,
dreads them equally. Dr Gray procured a large specimen in a tub from
that district. It was skinned and set up by Mr Bartlett. I have seen
photographs in the hands of my excellent old friend--that admirable
natural history and anatomical draughtsman--Mr George Ford of Hatton
Garden. These photographs were taken from its truly ugly face as it was
pulled out of the stinking brine. Life in death, or death in life, it
was most repulsive.
Professor Owen read a most elaborate paper on the gorilla before the
Zoological Society. The great comparative anatomist and zoologist shows
that it _may_ have been the very species whose skins were brought by
Hanno to Carthage, in times before the Christian era, as the skins of
_hairy wild men_. The historian refers to them as "gorullai" ([Greek:
Goryllai].)
The natives of West Africa name it "N'Geena."
* * * * *
The stuffed specimen at the Museum is a young male. Its preparation does
great credit to Mr Bartlett's care and knowledge, for the hair over
nearly all the body was in patches among the spirit--thoroughly
corrupted in its alcoholic strength by animal matter. The peculiarly
anthropoid and morbidly-disagreeable look that even the face of the
young gorilla had was, of course, perfect in the photograph. In the
_Leisure Hour_, a tolerably good cut of it was given, but the artist did
not copy the label accurately, for on the photograph from which that cut
was derived, _another name_ was rendered by _that_ sun, who pays no
compliments and tells no lies. Professor Owen, the greatest of
comparative anatomists, has made the subject of anthropoid apes his own,
by the perfection of his researches, continued and continuous. He would
have liked, at least I may venture, I believe, to say so (if the matter
gave him more than a moment's thought), that the name of Dr Gray had
been on that label.
_Letter from C. Waterton, Esq., mentioning a young gorilla._
WALTON HALL, _Feb_. 4, 1856.
"DEAR SIR,--As your favour of the 28th did not seem to require an
immediate answer I put it aside for a while, having a multiplicity of
business then on hand, and being obliged to be from home for a couple of
days.
"I beg to enclose you the letter to which you allude.
"Pray do not suppose that for one single moment I should be illiberal
enough to undervalue a 'closet naturalist.' 'Non cuivis homini contingit
adire corinthum.' It does not fall to every one's lot to range through
the forests of Guiana, still, a gentleman given to natural history may
do wonders for it in his own apartments on his native soil; and had
Audubon, Swainson, Jameson, &c., not attacked me in all the pride of
pompous self-conceit, I should have been the last man in the world to
expose their gross ignorance.
"You ask me 'If we are to have another volume of essays?' I beg to
answer, no. Last year, Mrs Loudon (to whom I made a present of the
essays) wrote to me, and asked for a few papers to be inserted in a
forthcoming edition. I answered, that as I had had some strange and
awful adventures since the 'Autobiography' made its appearance, I would
tack them on to it. But from that time to this, I have never had a line,
either from Mrs Loudon or from her publishers. But some months ago,
having made a present of a superb case of preserved specimens in natural
history to the Jesuits' College in Lancashire, I gave directions to my
stationer at Wakefield to procure me from London the fourth or last
edition of the essays; and I made references to it accordingly. But, lo
and behold, when I had opened this supposed fourth edition, I saw
printed on the title page 'a new edition.' Better had they printed a
_fifth edition_. This threw all my references wrong. Should you be
passing by Messrs Longman, perhaps you will have the goodness to ask
when this 'new edition' was printed.
"I am sorry you did not show me your drawing of the chimpanzee before it
was engraved. The artist has not done justice to it. He has made the
ears far too large.[7] The little brown chimpanzee has very small ears;
fully as small in proportion as those of a genuine negro. I am half
inclined to give to the world a little treatise on the monkey tribe. I
am prepared to show that Linnaeus, Buffon, and all our hosts of
naturalists who have copied the remarks of these celebrated naturalists,
are perfectly in the dark with regard to the true character of _all_ the
monkey tribe. Yesterday, I sent up to the _Gardener's Chronicle_ a few
notes on the woodpecker.--Believe me, dear sir, very truly yours,
CHARLES WATERTON.
"P.S.--Many thanks for your nice little treatise on the chimpanzee."
Mr Waterton enclosed me a copy of the following letter, which he
published in a Yorkshire newspaper:--
_To Mrs Wombwell._
"MADAM,--I am truly sorry that the inclemency of the weather has
prevented the inhabitants of this renowned watering-place from visiting
your wonderful gorilla, or brown orang-outang.
"I have passed two hours in its company, and I have been gratified
beyond expression.
"Would that all lovers of natural history could get a sight of it, as,
possibly, they may never see another of the same species in this
country.
"It differs widely in one respect from all other orang-outangs which
have been exhibited in England--namely, that, when on the ground, it
never walks on the soles of its fore-feet, but on the knuckles of the
toes of those feet; and those toes are doubled up like the closed fist
of a man. This must be a painful position; and, to relieve itself, the
animal catches hold of visitors, and clings caressingly to Miss Bright,
who exhibits it. Here then, it is at rest, with the toes of the
fore-feet performing their natural functions, which they never do when
the animal is on the ground.
"Hence I draw the conclusion that this singular quadruped, like the
sloth, is not a walker on the ground of its own free-will, but by
accident only.
"No doubt whatever it is born, and lives, and dies aloft, amongst the
trees in the forests of Africa.
"Put it on a tree, and then it will immediately have the full use of the
toes of its fore-feet. Place it on the ground, and then you will see
that the toes of the fore-feet become useless, as I have already
described.
"That it may retain its health, and thus remunerate you for the large
sum which you have expended in the purchase of it, is, madam, the
sincere hope of your obedient servant and well-wisher,
CHARLES WATERTON."
Scarborough Cliff, No. 1, _Nov. 1, 1855_.
"_P.S._--You are quite at liberty to make what use you choose of this
letter. I have written it for your own benefit, and for the good of
natural history."[8]
MR MITCHELL ON A YOUNG CHIMPANZEE.