xhibited as monstrosities (see Bastian and Hartmann, _Zeitschrift fur
Ethnologie_, Index, "Geschwanzte Menschen"; Gould and Pile, _Anomalies
and Curiosities of Medicine_, 1897). To Linnaeus, however, they
represented normal anthropomorpha or man-like creatures, vouched for by
visitors to remote parts of the world. This opinion of the Swedish
naturalist seems to have been little noticed in Great Britain till it
was taken up by the learned but credulous Scottish judge, Lord Monboddo
(see his _Origin and Progress of Language_, 1774, &c.; _Antient
Metaphysics_, 1778). He had not heard of the tailed men till he met with
them in the work of Linnaeus, with whom he entered into correspondence,
with the result that he enlarged his range of mankind with races of
sub-human type. One was founded on the description by the Swedish sailor
Niklas Koping of the ferocious men with long tails inhabiting the
Nicobar Islands. Another comprised the orang-utans of Sumatra, who were
said to take men captive and set them to work as slaves. One of these
apes, it was related, served as a sailor on board a Jamaica ship, and
used to wait on the captain. These are stories which seem to carry their
own explanation. When the Nicobar Islands were taken over by the British
government two centuries later, the native warriors were still wearing
their peculiar loin-cloth hanging behind in a most tail-like manner
(E.H. Man, _Journal Anthropological Institute_, vol. xv. p. 442). As for
the story of the orang-utan cabin boy, this may even be verbally true,
it being borne in mind that in the Malay languages the term
_orang-utan_, "man of the forest," was originally used for inland forest
natives and other rude men, rather than for the _miyas_ apes to which it
has come to be generally applied by Europeans. The speculations as to
primitive man connected with these stories diverted the British public,
headed by Dr Johnson, who said that Monboddo was "as jealous of his tail
as a squirrel." Linnaeus's primarily zoological classification of man
did not, however, suit the philosophical opinion of the time, which
responded more readily to the systems represented by Buffon, and later
by Cuvier, in which the human mind and soul formed an impassable wall of
partition between him and other mammalia, so that the definition of
man's position in the animal world was treated as not belonging to
zoology, but to metaphysics and theology. It has to be borne in mind
that Linnaeus,