. R.S.S.

JOHN HOSKINS, _V.P.R.S_.

The Pygmy described in this work was, as a matter of fact, a chimpanzee,
and its skeleton is at this present moment in the Natural History Museum
at South Kensington. Tyson's granddaughter married a Dr. Allardyce, who
was a physician of good standing in Cheltenham. The "Pygmie" formed a
somewhat remarkable item of her dowry. Her husband presented it to the
Cheltenham Museum, where it was fortunately carefully preserved until,
quite recently, it was transferred to its present position.

At the conclusion of the purely scientific part of the work the author
added four Philological Essays, as will have appeared from his title-page.
The first of these is both the longest and the most interesting, and has
alone been selected for republication in this volume.

This is not the place to deal with the scientific merit of the main body
of Tyson's work, but it may at least be said that it was the first attempt
which had been made to deal with the anatomy of any of the anthropoid
apes, and that its execution shows very conspicuous ability on the part of
its author.

Tyson, however, was not satisfied with the honour of being the author of
an important morphological work; he desired to round off his subject by
considering its bearing upon the, to him, wild and fabulous tales
concerning pigmy races. The various allusions to these races met with in
the pages of the older writers, and discussed in his, were to him what
fairy tales are to us. Like modern folk-lorists, he wished to explain,
even to euhemerise them, and bring them into line with the science of his
day. Hence the "Philological Essay" with which this book is concerned.
There are no pigmy races, he says; "the most diligent enquiries of late
into all the parts of the inhabited world could never discover any such
puny diminutive race of mankind." But there are tales about them, "fables
and wonderful and merry relations, that are transmitted down to us
concerning them," which surely require explanation. That explanation he
found in his theory that all the accounts of pigmy tribes were based upon
the mistakes of travellers who had taken apes for men. Nor was he without
followers in his opinion; amongst whom here need only be mentioned Buffon,
who in his _Histoire des Oiseaux_ explains the Homeric tale much as Tyson
had done. The discoveries, however, of this century have, as all know,
re-established in their essential details the accounts o