Description
Antique wood engraved page of featuring Oranguans and Chimpanzees
$9.99
The remarkable man-like apes of the great Indian
islands, appear to have been entirely unknown to the
ancients, unless Pliny’s mention of Indian satyrs
refers to the orang-outan. It is not, indeed, until the
middle of the seventeenth century, that we find any
notice of these animals in the writings of Europeans.
About this period, the Orang-outon is mentioned by
Johnston in his ” Historia Animalium,” but described
as brought from Angola. In 1658, however, some
genuine observations upon the orang, were published
in Holland; their author, Bontius, a Dutch physician
residing in Batavia, having seen ” several of these
satyrs of both sexes” in that country. The English
anatomist, Tyson, whose work on the chimpanzee has
already been quoted, also refers to the orang-outan,
upon the appearance and habits of which he had
obtained some details from a French missionary,
named Lecomte ; and a little later, Leguat, a French
voyager, gave a description of a large ape which he
saw in captivity in Java, and which could only have
been an orang-outan. The notices of the species then
become more frequent in works on Natural History;
but the two great authorities of the eighteenth century,
Linnaeus and Buffon, both agreed in regarding
the great Indian and African apes as belonging to a
[ingle species. They were imperfectly distinguished
iGmelin, who still describes the pongo as a variety
of the orang-outan, inhabiting both Java and Guinea.
Since the chimpanzee has been clearly recognized as
a species distinct from the orang, there has been a
tendency to multiply the species of the large Eastern
apes; and we find no less than six supposed species
described by different authors, principally from peculiarities
in the structure of the skeleton
Antique wood engraved page of featuring Oranguans and Chimpanzees