Man's Place in Nature and Other Essays Part 2

Thus when, in 1766, Buffon wrote the fourteenth volume of his great work, he was personally familiar with the young of one kind of African man-like Ape, and with the adult of an Asiatic species--while the Orang-Utan and the Mandrill of Smith were known to him by report.

Furthermore, the Abbe Prevost had translated a good deal of Purchas'

Pilgrims into French, in his "Histoire generale des Voyages" (1748), and there Buffon found a version of Andrew Battell's account of the Pongo and the Engeco. All these data Buffon attempts to weld together into harmony in his chapter ent.i.tled "Les Orang-outangs ou le Pongo et le Jocko." To this t.i.tle the following note is appended:--

"Orang-outang nom de cet animal aux Indes orientales: Pongo nom de cet animal a Lowando Province de Congo.

"Jocko, Enjocko, nom de cet animal a Congo que nous avons adopte. _En_ est l'article que nous avons retranche."

Thus it was that Andrew Battell's "Engeco" became metamorphosed into "Jocko," and, in the latter shape, was spread all over the world, in consequence of the extensive popularity of Buffon's works. The Abbe Prevost and Buffon between them, however, did a good deal more disfigurement to Battell's sober account than "cutting off an article."

Thus Battell's statement that the Pongos "cannot speake, and have no understanding more than a beast," is rendered by Buffon "qu'il ne peut parler _quoiqu'il ait plus d'entendement que les autres animaux_"; and again, Purchas' affirmation, "He told me in conference with him, that one of these Pongos tooke a negro boy of his which lived a moneth with them," stands in the French version, "un pongo lui enleva un pet.i.t negre qui pa.s.sa un _an_ entier dans la societe de ces animaux."

After quoting the account of the great Pongo, Buffon justly remarks, that all the "Jockos" and "Orangs" hitherto brought to Europe were young; and he suggests that, in their adult condition, they might be as big as the Pongo or "great Orang"; so that, provisionally, he regarded the Jockos, Orangs, and Pongos as all of one species. And perhaps this was as much as the state of knowledge at the time warranted. But how it came about that Buffon failed to perceive the similarity of Smith's "Mandrill" to his own "Jocko," and confounded the former with so totally different a creature as the blue-faced Baboon, is not so easily intelligible.

Twenty years later Buffon changed his opinion,[8] and expressed his belief that the Orangs const.i.tuted a genus with two species,--a large one, the Pongo of Battell, and a small one, the Jocko: that the small one (Jocko) is the East Indian Orang; and that the young animals from Africa, observed by himself and Tulpius, are simply young Pongos.

In the meanwhile, the Dutch naturalist, Vosmaer, gave, in 1778, a very good account and figure of a young Orang, brought alive to Holland, and his countryman, the famous anatomist, Peter Camper, published (1779) an essay on the Orang-Utan of similar value to that of Tyson on the Chimpanzee. He dissected several females and a male, all of which, from the state of their skeleton and their dent.i.tion, he justly supposes to have been young. However, judging by the a.n.a.logy of man, he concludes that they could not have exceeded four feet in height in the adult condition. Furthermore, he is very clear as to the specific distinctness of the true East Indian Orang.

"The Orang," says he, "differs not only from the Pigmy of Tyson and from the Orang of Tulpius by its peculiar colour and its long toes, but also by its whole external form. Its arms, its hands, and its feet are longer, while the thumbs, on the contrary, are much shorter, and the great toes much smaller in proportion."[9] And again, "The true Orang, that is to say, that of Asia, that of Borneo, is consequently not the Pithecus, or tail-less Ape, which the Greeks, and especially Galen, have described. It is neither the Pongo nor the Jocko, nor the Orang of Tulpius, nor the Pigmy of Tyson,--_it is an animal of a peculiar species_, as I shall prove in the clearest manner by the organs of voice and the skeleton in the following chapters" (l. c. p. 64).

A few years later, M. Radermacher, who held a high office in the Government of the Dutch dominions in India, and was an active member of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, published, in the second part of the Transactions of that Society,[10] a Description of the Island of Borneo, which was written between the years 1779 and 1781, and, among much other interesting matter, contains some notes upon the Orang. The small sort of Orang-Utan, viz. that of Vosmaer and of Edwards, he says, is found only in Borneo, and chiefly about Banjerma.s.sing, Mampauwa, and Landak. Of these he had seen some fifty during his residence in the Indies; but none exceeded 2-1/2 feet in length. The larger sort, often regarded as chimaera, continues Radermacher, would, perhaps long have remained so, had it not been for the exertions of the Resident at Rembang, M. Palm, who, on returning from Landak towards Pontiana, shot one, and forwarded it to Batavia in spirit, for transmission to Europe.

Palm's letter describing the capture runs thus:--"Herewith I send your Excellency, contrary to all expectation (since long ago I offered more than a hundred ducats to the natives for an Orang-Utan of four or five feet high) an Orang which I heard of this morning about eight o'clock.

For a long time we did our best to take the frightful beast alive in the dense forest about half way to Landak. We forgot even to eat, so anxious were we not to let him escape; but it was necessary to take care he did not revenge himself, as he kept continually breaking off heavy pieces of wood and green branches, and dashing them at us. This game lasted till four o'clock in the afternoon, when we determined to shoot him; in which I succeeded very well, and indeed better than I ever shot from a boat before; for the bullet went just into the side of his chest, so that he was not much damaged. We got him into the prow still living, and bound him fast, and next morning he died of his wounds. All Pontiana came on board to see him when we arrived." Palm gives his height from the head to the heel as 49 inches.

A very intelligent German officer, Baron Von Wurmb, who at this time held a post in the Dutch East India service, and was Secretary of the Batavian Society, studied this animal, and his careful description of it, ent.i.tled "Beschrijving van der Groote Borneosche Orang-outang of de Oost-Indische Pongo," is contained in the same volume of the Batavian Society's Transactions. After Von Wurmb had drawn up his description he states, in a letter dated Batavia, Feb. 18, 1781,[11] that the specimen was sent to Europe in brandy to be placed in the collection of the Prince of Orange; "unfortunately," he continues, "we hear that the ship has been wrecked." Von Wurmb died in the course of the year 1781, the letter in which this pa.s.sage occurs being the last he wrote; but in his posthumous papers, published in the fourth part of the Transactions of the Batavian Society, there is a brief description, with measurements, of a female Pongo four feet high.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 7.--The Pongo Skull, sent by Radermacher to Camper, after Camper's original sketches, as reproduced by Lucae.]

Did either of these original specimens, on which Von Wurmb's descriptions are based, ever reach Europe? It is commonly supposed that they did; but I doubt the fact. For, appended to the memoir "De l'Ourang-outang," in the collected edition of Camper's works, tome i., pp. 64-66, is a note by Camper himself, referring to Von Wurmb's papers, and continuing thus:--"Heretofore, this kind of ape had never been known in Europe. Radermacher has had the kindness to send me the skull of one of these animals, which measured fifty-three inches, or four feet five inches, in height. I have sent some sketches of it to M. Soemmering at Mayence, which are better calculated, however, to give an idea of the form than of the real size of the parts."

These sketches have been reproduced by Fischer and by Lucae, and bear date 1783, Soemmering having received them in 1784. Had either of Von Wurmb's specimens reached Holland, they would hardly have been unknown at this time to Camper, who, however, goes on to say:--"It appears that since this, some more of these monsters have been captured, for an entire skeleton, very badly set up, which had been sent to the Museum of the Prince of Orange, and which I saw only on the 27th of June, 1784, was more than four feet high. I examined this skeleton again on the 19th December, 1785, after it had been excellently put to rights by the ingenious Onymus."

It appears evident, then, that this skeleton, which is doubtless that which has always gone by the name of Wurmb's Pongo, is not that of the animal described by him, though unquestionably similar in all essential points.

Camper proceeds to note some of the most important features of this skeleton; promises to describe it in detail by-and-bye; and is evidently in doubt as to the relation of this great "Pongo" to his "pet.i.t Orang."

The promised further investigations were never carried out; and so it happened that the Pongo of Von Wurmb took its place by the side of the Chimpanzee, Gibbon, and Orang as a fourth and colossal species of man-like Ape. And indeed nothing could look much less like the Chimpanzees or the Orangs, then known, than the Pongo; for all the specimens of Chimpanzee and Orang which had been observed were small of stature, singularly human in aspect, gentle and docile; while Wurmb's Pongo was a monster almost twice their size, of vast strength and fierceness, and very brutal in expression; its great projecting muzzle, armed with strong teeth, being further disfigured by the outgrowth of the cheeks into fleshy lobes.

Eventually, in accordance with the usual marauding habits of the Revolutionary armies, the "Pongo" skeleton was carried away from Holland into France, and notices of it, expressly intended to demonstrate its entire distinctness from the Orang and its affinity with the baboons, were given, in 1798, by Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier.

Even in Cuvier's "Tableau Elementaire," and in the first edition of his great work, the "Regne Animal," the "Pongo" is cla.s.sed as a species of Baboon. However, so early as 1818, it appears that Cuvier saw reason to alter this opinion, and to adopt the view suggested several years before by Blumenbach,[12] and after him by Tilesius, that the Bornean Pongo is simply an adult Orang. In 1824, Rudolphi demonstrated, by the condition of the dent.i.tion, more fully and completely than had been done by his predecessors, that the Orangs described up to that time were all young animals, and that the skull and teeth of the adult would probably be such as those seen in the Pongo of Wurmb. In the second edition of the "Regne Animal" (1829), Cuvier infers, from the "proportions of all the parts" and "the arrangements of the foramina and sutures of the head," that the Pongo is the adult of the Orang-Utan, "at least of a very closely allied species," and this conclusion was eventually placed beyond all doubt by Professor Owen's Memoir published in the "Zoological Transactions" for 1835, and by Temminck in his "Monographies de Mammalogie." Temminck's memoir is remarkable for the completeness of the evidence which it affords as to the modification which the form of the Orang undergoes according to age and s.e.x. Tiedemann first published an account of the brain of the young Orang, while Sandifort, Muller and Schlegel, described the muscles and the viscera of the adult, and gave the earliest detailed and trustworthy history of the habits of the great Indian Ape in a state of nature; and as important additions have been made by later observers, we are at this moment better acquainted with the adult of the Orang-Utan, than with that of any of the other greater man-like Apes.

It is certainly the Pongo of Wurmb;[13] and it is as certainly not the Pongo of Battell, seeing that the Orang-Utan is entirely confined to the great Asiatic islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

And while the progress of discovery thus cleared up the history of the Orang, it also became established that the only other man-like Apes in the eastern world were the various species of Gibbon--Apes of smaller stature, and therefore attracting less attention than the Orangs, though they are spread over a much wider range of country, and are hence more accessible to observation.

Although the geographical area inhabited by the "Pongo" and "Engeco" of Battell is so much nearer to Europe than that in which the Orang and Gibbon are found, our acquaintance with the African Apes has been of slower growth; indeed, it is only within the last few years that the truthful story of the old English adventurer has been rendered fully intelligible. It was not until 1835 that the skeleton of the adult Chimpanzee became known, by the publication of Professor Owen's above-mentioned very excellent memoir "On the osteology of the Chimpanzee and Orang," in the Zoological Transactions--a memoir which, by the accuracy of its descriptions, the carefulness of its comparisons, and the excellence of its figures, made an epoch in the history of our knowledge of the bony framework, not only of the Chimpanzee, but of all the anthropoid Apes.

By the investigations herein detailed, it became evident that the old Chimpanzee acquired a size and aspect as different from those of the young known to Tyson, to Buffon, and to Traill, as those of the old Orang from the young Orang; and the subsequent very important researches of Messrs. Savage and Wyman, the American missionary and anatomist, have not only confirmed this conclusion, but have added many new details.[14]

One of the most interesting among the many valuable discoveries made by Dr. Thomas Savage is the fact, that the natives in the Gaboon country at the present day, apply to the Chimpanzee a name--"Enche-eko"--which is obviously identical with the "Engeko" of Battell; a discovery which has been confirmed by all later inquirers. Battell's "lesser monster," being thus proved to be a veritable existence, of course a strong presumption arose that his "greater monster," the "Pongo," would sooner or later be discovered. And, indeed, a modern traveller, Bowdich, had, in 1819, found strong evidence, among the natives, of the existence of a second great Ape, called the "Ingena," "five feet high, and four across the shoulders," the builder of a rude house, on the outside of which it slept.

In 1847, Dr. Savage had the good fortune to make another and most important addition to our knowledge of the man-like Apes; for, being unexpectedly detained at the Gaboon river, he saw in the house of the Rev. Mr. Wilson, a missionary resident there, "a skull represented by the natives to be a monkey-like animal, remarkable for its size, ferocity, and habits." From the contour of the skull, and the information derived from several intelligent natives, "I was induced,"

says Dr. Savage (using the term Orang in its old general sense), "to believe that it belonged to a new species of Orang. I expressed this opinion to Mr. Wilson, with a desire for further investigation; and, if possible, to decide the point by the inspection of a specimen alive or dead." The result of the combined exertions of Messrs. Savage and Wilson was not only the obtaining of a very full account of the habits of this new creature, but a still more important service to science, the enabling the excellent American anatomist already mentioned, Professor Wyman, to describe, from ample materials, the distinctive osteological characters of the new form. This animal was called by the natives of the Gaboon "Enge-ena," a name obviously identical with the "Ingena" of Bowdich; and Dr. Savage arrived at the conviction that this last discovered of all the great Apes was the long-sought "Pongo" of Battell.

The justice of this conclusion, indeed, is beyond doubt--for not only does the "Enge-ena" agree with Battell's "greater monster" in its hollow eyes, its great stature and its dun or iron-grey colour, but the only other man-like Ape which inhabits these lat.i.tudes--the Chimpanzee--is at once identified, by its smaller size, as the "lesser monster," and is excluded from any possibility of being the "Pongo," by the fact that it is black and not dun, to say nothing of the important circ.u.mstance already mentioned that it still retains the name of "Engeko," or "Enche-eko," by which Battell knew it.

In seeking for a specific name for the "Enge-ena," however, Dr. Savage wisely avoided the much misused "Pongo"; but finding in the ancient Periplus of Hanno the word "Gorilla" applied to certain hairy savage people, discovered by the Carthaginian voyager in an island on the African coast, he attached the specific name "_Gorilla_" to his new ape, whence arises its present well-known appellation. But Dr. Savage, more cautious than some of his successors, by no means identifies his ape with Hanno's "wild men." He merely says that the latter were "probably one of the species of the Orang;" and I quite agree with M. Brulle that there is no ground for identifying the modern "Gorilla" with that of the Carthaginian admiral.

Since the memoir of Savage and Wyman was published, the skeleton of the Gorilla has been investigated by Professor Owen and by the late Professor Duvernoy, of the Jardin des Plantes, the latter having further supplied a valuable account of the muscular system and of many of the other soft parts; while African missionaries and travellers have confirmed and expanded the account originally given of the habits of this great man-like Ape, which has had the singular fortune of being the first to be made known to the general world and the last to be scientifically investigated.

Two centuries and a half have pa.s.sed away since Battell told his stories about the "greater" and the "lesser monsters" to Purchas, and it has taken nearly that time to arrive at the clear result that there are four distinct kinds of Anthropoids--in Eastern Asia, the Gibbons and the Orangs; in Western Africa, the Chimpanzees and the Gorilla.

The man-like Apes, the history of whose discovery has just been detailed, have certain characters of structure and of distribution in common. Thus they all have the same number of teeth as man--possessing four incisors, two canines, four false molars, and six true molars in each jaw, or 32 teeth in all, in the adult condition; while the milk dent.i.tion consists of 20 teeth--or four incisors, two canines, and four molars in each jaw. They are what are called catarrhine Apes--that is, their nostrils have a narrow part.i.tion and look downwards; and, furthermore, their arms are always longer than their legs, the difference being sometimes greater and sometimes less; so that if the four were arranged in the order of the length of their arms in proportion to that of their legs, we should have this series--Orang (1-4/9--1), Gibbon (1-1/4--1), Gorilla (1-1/5--1), Chimpanzee (1-1/16--1). In all, the fore-limbs are terminated by hands, provided with longer or shorter thumbs; while the great toe of the foot, always smaller than in Man, is far more moveable than in him and can be opposed, like a thumb, to the rest of the foot. None of these apes have tails, and none of them possess the cheek-pouches common among monkeys.

Finally, they are all inhabitants of the old world.

The Gibbons are the smallest, slenderest, and longest-limbed of the man-like Apes: their arms are longer in proportion to their bodies than those of any of the other man-like Apes, so that they can touch the ground when erect; their hands are longer than their feet, and they are the only Anthropoids which possess callosities like the lower monkeys.

They are variously coloured. The Orangs have arms which reach to the ankles in the erect position of the animal; their thumbs and great toes are very short, and their feet are longer than their hands. They are covered with reddish-brown hair, and the sides of the face, in adult males, are commonly produced into two crescentic, flexible excrescences, like fatty tumours. The Chimpanzees have arms which reach below the knees; they have large thumbs and great toes, their hands are longer than their feet, and their hair is black, while the skin of the face is pale. The Gorilla, lastly, has arms which reach to the middle of the leg, large thumbs and great toes, feet longer than the hands, a black face, and dark-grey or dun hair.

For the purpose which I have at present in view, it is unnecessary that I should enter into any further minutiae respecting the distinctive characters of the genera and species into which these man-like Apes are divided by naturalists. Suffice it to say, that the Orangs and the Gibbons const.i.tute the distinct genera, _Simia_ and _Hylobates_; while the Chimpanzees and Gorillas are by some regarded simply as distinct species of one genus, _Troglodytes_; by others as distinct genera--_Troglodytes_ being reserved for the Chimpanzees, and _Gorilla_ for the Enge-ena or Pongo.

Sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like Apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure.

Once in a generation, a Wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through the tropical wilds of America and of Asia; to form magnificent collections as he wanders; and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections: but, to the ordinary explorer or collector, the dense forests of equatorial Asia and Africa, which const.i.tute the favourite habitation of the Orang, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla, present difficulties of no ordinary magnitude: and the man who risks his life by even a short visit to the malarious sh.o.r.es of those regions may well be excused if he shrinks from facing the dangers of the interior; if he contents himself with stimulating the industry of the better seasoned natives, and collecting and collating the more or less mythical reports and traditions with which they are too ready to supply him.

In such a manner most of the earlier accounts of the habits of the man-like Apes originated; and even now a good deal of what pa.s.ses current must be admitted to have no very safe foundation. The best information we possess is that, based almost wholly on direct European testimony, respecting the Gibbons; the next best evidence relates to the Orangs; while our knowledge of the habits of the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla stands much in need of support and enlargement by additional testimony from instructed European eye-witnesses.

It will therefore be convenient in endeavouring to form a notion of what we are justified in believing about these animals, to commence with the best known man-like Apes, the Gibbons and Orangs; and to make use of the perfectly reliable information respecting them as a sort of criterion of the probable truth or falsehood of a.s.sertions respecting the others.

Of the GIBBONS, half a dozen species are found scattered over the Asiatic islands, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and through Malacca, Siam, Arracan, and an uncertain extent of Hindostan, on the main land of Asia.

The largest attain a few inches above three feet in height, from the crown to the heel, so that they are shorter than the other man-like Apes; while the slenderness of their bodies renders their ma.s.s far smaller in proportion even to this diminished height.

Dr. Salomon Muller, an accomplished Dutch naturalist, who lived for many years in the Eastern Archipelago, and to the results of whose personal experience I shall frequently have occasion to refer, states that the Gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees. All day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees; and though, towards evening, they descend in small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they spy a man than they dart up the hill-sides, and disappear in the darker valleys.

All observers testify to the prodigious volume of voice possessed by these animals. According to the writer whom I have just cited, in one of them, the Siamang, "the voice is grave and penetrating, resembling the sounds g[=o]ek, g[=o]ek, g[=o]ek, g[=o]ek, goek ha ha ha ha haa[=a][=a][=a], and may easily be heard at a distance of half a league." While the cry is being uttered, the great membranous bag under the throat which communicates with the organ of voice, the so-called "laryngeal sac," becomes greatly distended, diminishing again when the creature relapses into silence.

M. Duvaucel, likewise, affirms that the cry of the Siamang may be heard for miles--making the woods ring again. So Mr. Martin[15] describes the cry of the agile Gibbon as "overpowering and deafening" in a room, and "from its strength, well calculated for resounding through the vast forests." Mr. Waterhouse, an accomplished musician as well as zoologist, says, "The Gibbon's voice is certainly much more powerful than that of any singer I ever heard." And yet it is to be recollected that this animal is not half the height of, and far less bulky in proportion than, a man.

There is good testimony that various species of Gibbon readily take to the erect posture. Mr. George Bennett,[16] a very excellent observer, in describing the habits of a male _Hylobates syndactylus_ which remained for some time in his possession, says: "He invariably walks in the erect posture when on a level surface; and then the arms either hang down, enabling him to a.s.sist himself with his knuckles; or what is more usual, he keeps his arms uplifted in nearly an erect position, with the hands pendent ready to seize a rope, and climb up on the approach of danger or on the obtrusion of strangers. He walks rather quick in the erect posture, but with a waddling gait, and is soon run down if, whilst pursued, he has no opportunity of escaping by climbing.... When he walks in the erect posture he turns the leg and foot outwards, which occasions him to have a waddling gait and to seem bow-legged."

Dr. Burrough states of another Gibbon, the Horlack or Hooluk:

"They walk erect; and when placed on the floor, or in an open field, balance themselves very prettily, by raising their hands over their head and slightly bending the arm at the wrist and elbow, and then run tolerably fast, rocking from side to side; and, if urged to greater speed, they let fall their hands to the ground, and a.s.sist themselves forward, rather jumping than running, still keeping the body, however, nearly erect."