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I
ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MAN-LIKE APES.
Ancient traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern investigation, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is singular how often the dream turns out to have
Fig. 1.—Simiæ magnatum deliciæ.—De Bry, 1598.
been a half-waking one, presaging a reality. Ovid foreshadowed the discoveries of the geologist: the Atlantis was an imagination, but Columbus found a western world: and though the quaint forms of Centaurs and Satyrs have an existence only in the realms of art, creatures approaching man more nearly than they in the essential structure, and yet as