the top
of the head to the heel of the foot, in a strait line, it measured
twenty-six inches."
(FIGURES 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',* 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."
([Footnote] * I am indebted to Dr. Wright, of Cheltenham, whose
paleontological labours are so well known, for bringing this interesting
relic to my knowledge. Tyson's granddaughter, it appears, married Dr.
Allardyce, a physician of repute in Cheltenham, and brought, as part of
her dowry, the skeleton of the 'Pygmie.' Dr. Allardyce presented it to
the Cheltenham Museum, and, through the good offices of my friend Dr.
Wright, the authorities of the Museum have permitted me to borrow, what
is, perhaps its most remarkable ornament.
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 im
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