might be inclined to frame.

The scientific men to whom we are chiefly indebted for the facts
accumulated on this subject, are Dr. Blumenbach, of Göttingen, Dr.
Pritchard, of Edinburgh, and the eminent surgeon, Mr. Lawrence. It has
been a favourite matter of speculation with Lord Monboddo, as well as
with Voltaire, Rousseau, and the philosophers of the French school, who
have endeavoured to show that men and other animals are endowed with
reason or instinct of the same kind, but of different degrees. According
to these fanciful writers, the monkey is but another species of the
human race, and has been termed by them _Homo Sylvestris_. They made the
most diligent researches into all accounts concerning men in a savage
state, and were delighted beyond measure with the discovery alleged to
have been made in the island of Sumatra, of men with tails regularly
protruding from their hinder parts, who, according to Buffon, walked and
talked in the woods like other gentlemen:--

And backwards and forwards they switched their long tails,
Like a gentleman switching his cane.

The appearance of Peter the Wild Boy, who was found in the woods of
Hamela, in Hanover, living on the bark of trees, leaves, berries, &c.
threw Voltaire into transports of joy. He declared the event to be the
most wonderful and important that ages had recorded in the annals of
science, as it demonstrated the fact of man living after the fashion of
beasts, without the least spark of civilization, and without speech;
thereby forming a species of a nature having more in common with monkeys
than with men, and presenting the regular degree, or intermediate class,
between the _homo civilis_ and the _homo sylvestris_. The circumstance,
however, which afterwards transpired, of Peter's having been found with