feeble in knowledge of natural history from
almost total ignorance of the subject, over which he threw the graces of
his charming style, noticed, as remarkable, that in countries "where the
men are barbarous and stupid, the brutes are the most active and
sagacious." He continues, that it is in the torrid tracts, inhabited by
barbarians, that animals are found with instinct so nearly approaching
reason. Both in Africa and America, accordingly, he tells us, "the
savages suppose monkeys to be men; idle, slothful, rational beings,
capable of speech and conversation, but obstinately dumb, for fear of
being compelled to labour."

For the present, I shall suppose that the gorilla, largest of all the
apes, can not only speak, but write; and is speaking and writing to an
orang-utan of Borneo. Even a Lamarckian will allow this to be within the
range of possibility. Were it possible to get Gay or Cowper to write a
new set of fables, animals, in the days of postoffices and letters,
would become, like the age, epistolary. But a word on the imaginary
correspondent.

The orang, as the reader knows, is the great red-haired "Man of the
Woods," as the name may be rendered in English. My old friend, Mr Alfred
Wallace, lately in New Guinea, and the adjoining parts, collecting
natural history subjects, and making all kinds of valuable observations
and surveys, sent to Europe most of the magnificent specimens of this
"ugly beast" now in the museum. He has detailed its habits and history
in an able account, published some years ago in "The Annals and Magazine
of Natural History."

Its home seems to be the fine forests which cover many parts of the
coast of Borneo. The home of the gorilla and chimpanzee are in the
tropical forests of the coasts of Western Africa.

There would seem to be but three or four well established _species_ of
these apes, though there are, as in man and most created beings, some
marked or decided varieties. These apes are altogether _quadrupeds_,
adapted for a life among trees. The late Charles Waterton, of Walton
Hall, whom I deem it an honour to have known for many years, personally
and in his writings, has well shown this in his "Essays on Natural
History." Professor Owen, with his osteologies, and old Tyson, with his
anatomies, have each demonstrated that--draw what inferences the
followers of Mr Darwin may choose--monkeys are not men, but quadrupeds.

The structure of chimpanzee, orang, and gorilla considerab