nearly than they in essential structure, and yet as thoroughly brutal
as the goat's or horse's half of the mythical compound, are now not
only known, but notorious.

I have not met with any notice of one of these MAN-LIKE APES of earlier
date than that contained in Pigafetta's 'Description of the Kingdom of
Congo,'* drawn up from the notes of a Portuguese sailor, Eduardo Lopez,
and published in 1598. The tenth chapter of this work is entitled "De
Animalibus quae in hac provincia reperiuntur," and contains a brief
passage to the effect that "in the Songan country, on the banks of the
Zaire, there are multitudes of apes, which afford great delight to the
nobles by imitating human gestures." As this might apply to almost any
kind of apes, I should have thought little of it, had not the brothers
De Bry, whose engravings illustrate the work, thought fit, in their
eleventh 'Argumentum,' to figure two of these "Simiae magnatum
deliciae." So much of the plate as contains these apes is faithfully
copied in the woodcut (Fig. 1), and it will be observed that they are
tail-less, long-armed, and large-eared; and about the size of
Chimpanzees. It may be that these apes are as much figments of the
imagination of the ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged,
crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same plate; or, on the other
hand, it may be that the artists have constructed their drawings from
some essentially faithful description of a Gorilla or a Chimpanzee.
And, in either case, though these figures are worth a passing notice,
the oldest trustworthy and definite accounts of any animal of this kind
date from the 17th century, and are due to an Englishman.

[FOOTNOTE] * REGNUM CONGO: hoc est VERA DESCRIPTIO REGNI
AFRICANI QUOD TAM AB INCOLIS QUAM LUSITANIS CONGUS
APPELLATUR, per Philippum Pigafettam, olim ex Edoardo Lopez