Evidence as to Man's Place In Nature

Book Excerpt: ... From this weather-beaten old soldier, Purchas was amazed to hear "of a kinde of Great Apes, if they might so bee termed, of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature of their limmes, with strength proportionable, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like men and women in their whole bodily shape.* They lived on such wilde fruits as the trees and woods yielded, and in the night time lodged on the trees."[footnote] *"Except this that their legges had no calves."--[Ed. 1626.] And in a marginal note, "These great apes are called Pongo's."This extract is, however, less detailed and clear in its statements than a passage in the third chapter of the second part of another work--'Purchas his Pilgrimes, ' published in 1625, by the same author--which has been often, though hardly ever quite rightly, cited. The chapter is entitled, "The strange adventures of Andrew Battell, of Leigh in Essex, sent by the Portugals prisoner to Angola, who lived there and in the adioining regions neere eighteene..