Stubbs's "Drill and albino hamadryas baboon" in conjectural historical context

Archives of natural history 33 (1): 18–41. 2006 © W. R. I. Rolfe & C. Grigson 2006.

Stubbs’s “Drill and albino hamadryas baboon” in conjectural historical contextW. D. IAN ROLFEA and CAROLINE GRIGSONB

A4A Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh EH3 7TH (e-mail: [email protected])BInstitute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY (e-mail: [email protected])

ABSTRACT: This painting by George Stubbs (1724–1806) was probably commissioned by John Hunter (1728–1793) as a visual record of two poorly known exotic primates, the drill, Mandrillus leucophaeus (F. Cuvier), and a hamadryas baboon, Papio hamadryas (L.), at a time when there was confusion about the different kinds of apes and monkeys. The drill is supported in his erect posture by a staff, which can be read as proof of this ape’s proximity to man, but also of its less-than-human status. At that time, Rousseau and Monboddo viewed apes as progenitors of mankind, while David Hume’s concept of conjectural history attempted to reconstruct how human nature might have changed during savage man’s passage from nature to culture. Hunter, with his many preparations of monkeys and apes and his views on gradation, was interested in this topic. Stubbs’s depictions of two other macaques, a crab-eating macaque, Macaca fascicularis (Raffl es), and a Barbary ‘ape’, Macaca sylvanus (L.), indicate that he had seen the three main types of monkey and ape as perceived in the eighteenth century: monkey, baboon and ‘ape’, creatures then discriminated by their tails. His painting of a crab-eating macaque holding a peach may symbolize monkeys’ muteness – a supposed indication of their higher rationality.

KEY WORDS: Macaques – David Hume – Hunter – Monboddo – Rousseau – gradation.

INTRODUCTION

George Stubbs (1724–1806) is today regarded as “one of the greatest of English painters ... the most original and searching of all painters of animals” whose “work ... embraces in its affectionate study, man, the whole animal kingdom, and nature” (Waterhouse, 1962: 207; Egerton, 1984: 7). He believed, like William Hunter (1718–1783), that “nature was and is always superior to art”, a view perhaps derived from Hogarth; in his paintings of animals, as Walpole noted in 1763 “life itself is here” (Egerton, 1984: 19; Hall, 2000: 202; Taylor, 1965: 85; 1975: 33, 35; Paulson, 1975: 160; Kemp, 1975, 1992; Rolfe, 1983: 282, n. 34; Lennox-Boyd et alii, 1989: 2; Warner and Blake, 2004: x, 107; but compare Blake, 2005).1

One of the greatest personal infl uences on Stubbs’s anatomical career was his association with the anatomist brothers, William and John Hunter (Egerton, 1976: 17,31). For them, Stubbs painted several exotic animals, at a time of intense interest in such new arrivals2: “No new animal was brought to this country which was not shewn to” John Hunter, and he was the “most capable of ... making out their place in the scale of animals” according to his brother-in-law Everard Home (1794; Cross, 1981: 82).3 Stubbs’s painting of a “Drill and albino hamadryas baboon” (Figure 1) was thus probably commissioned by John Hunter primarily as a visual record of such new animals. He added it to his collection of paintings of such exotica, as later he was to add their internal organs to his collection of comparative anatomical preparations. Parts of these two specimens, including 40 bones of the drill, were included among the twelve or so different species of monkey and ape in John’s collection, most of which he had dissected himself (Hunter, 1861: 2: 8–27; Owen, 1853: 734: numbers

19STUBBS’S “DRILL AND ALBINO HAMADRYAS BABOON”

4673–5030).4 John Hunter’s “knowledge of the Primates was considerable and he spared no effort to obtain specimens and to have their details recorded” (Hill, 1966: 20).

This alone would have been suffi cient reason for John Hunter to have been interested in the two animals in this painting. But John was also interested in albinism, shown by the hamadryas baboon (Hunter, 1786: 199–209; 1840: 285–292; Palmer, 1837: 4: 277–285). He believed that animals became lighter through breeding, and reversed Buffon’s insistence that the skin colour of original humanity was white (albino) (Hunter, 1786: 200; Barnard, 2002: 95).

STUBBS’S PAINTING

Many pictures from John Hunter’s collection were sold after his death in 1793, but those which “had a direct connection with his researches” remained with his collections of human and animal preparations, together with some plants and fossils. These were acquired in 1799 for what soon became The Royal College of Surgeons of England, in London, where, although much depleted by time, dispersal and 1941 bomb damage, it is still housed (Dobson, 1954: 47; Gruber, 2004; Moore, 2005). William Clift, personal assistant to John Hunter from 1792 and the fi rst conservator of the museum of The Royal College of Surgeons, made two catalogues of such pictures in 1816 and 1820. According to LeFanu (1960: 88), these catalogues describe Stubbs’s painting as “two monkeys, male and female, the property of Lord Shelburne”.5 Both John and William Hunter had several contacts with Lord Shelburne.6

Figure 1. George Stubbs “Drill and albino hamadryas baboon” 1770–1775, oil painting on millboard, 67 × 97cm. Reproduced by permission of The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

http://www.eupjournals.com/action/showImage?doi=10.3366/anh.2006.33.1.18&iName=master.img-000.jpg&w=371&h=256

20 STUBBS’S “DRILL AND ALBINO HAMADRYAS BABOON”

However, John Hunter’s own account lists what has been thought to be Stubbs’s painting as “Bailey’s monkey, of which I have a painting”, and “Mr Gough’s monkey, of which I have a painting” (Hunter, 1861: 2: 16–19). This account was edited for publication by Richard Owen, assistant to Clift from 1827 and his son-in-law from 1835 (Sloan, 1992: 14; Gruber and Thackray, 1992: 161). Bailey and Gough were animal dealers in Piccadilly and Holborn Hill respectively, with whom John Hunter had several transactions, including the cross-breeding of his own dog with a wolf owned by Gough (Dobson, 1962: 482; 1969: 180; Moore, 2005: 366, 395). Owen interpreted the animal subjects as “Albino variety of a macacus” and “The pig-faced baboon Papio porcarius Kuhl”, respectively. Such determinations need to be read in the mid-nineteenth century, taxonomically-confused context described by Hill (1970, 1974). Thereafter Stubbs’s painting was usually titled “Baboon and albino macaque monkey” (Keith, 1930; Taylor, 1955: 36, 64; Dobson, 19697, 1975: 210; LeFanu, 1960) until Hill (1970: 352, plate 18) revised these to a male drill, Mandrillus leucophaeus (F. Cuvier) (see Melville and Smith, 1987: 249), and a male albino hamadryas or sacred baboon, Papio hamadryas (L.).

The connection between these dealers and Lord Shelburne, if indeed there was one, remains unknown, although there is an undated letter from Shelburne asking William Hunter to show a “Mr Baily” his museum (Brock, 1996: 108, n. 554).

Taylor (1975: 210) thought this painting was “comparable in style with Stubbs’s other wild animal paintings bearing dates between 1770 and 1775”, and Egerton (1984: 125) endorsed this date of about 1770. Confi rmation of this may be found in the fact that Hunter added soft tissue preparations of both the albino baboon and the drill to his collection before 17 October 1777.8

CONTEMPORANEOUS ILLUSTRATIONS OF DRILL AND HAMADRYAS BABOON

The superiority of Stubbs’s depiction of these two animals may be judged by comparing them with contemporaneous illustrations9 in Pennant (1771, 1781, 1793) (Figure 2), the populariser of natural history for the enthusiastic English amateur of his day (Egerton, 1976: 30).10

These species were not dealt with by Buffon in the relevant volume 14 of the fi rst edition of his Histoire naturelle (1766), complete sets of which were owned and used by both John and William Hunter (Ferguson and Smith, 1930: 62; Dempster, 1975). Only later were they illustrated in Buffon’s 1789 Supplément (Figure 3), of which John Hunter may have had a copy.11

After Vesalius (1543), “Every anatomist had to concern himself with ... the physical differences between men and apes” since Vesalius had criticised Galen for basing his knowledge of human anatomy solely on the dissection of apes, believing their anatomical structure to be identical (Janson, 1952; Dougherty, 1995).12 There was much confusion about the different species of apes and monkeys before the early nineteenth century, unsurprisingly in view of the diffi culty of seeing live specimens (Gourevitch, 1988: 42; Moran, 1993: 39).13

Since at least the fi fteenth century, unknown species of monkey had been arriving in Europe from overseas, to be sold or given as gifts to the powerful of the period. These were usually young animals, many of which died en route and ended up in markets as desiccated skins or skeletal parts. Their juvenile character, and their brief lives, explain much of the early diffi culty in classifying them (Dobson, 1953: 6; Martinez-Contreras, 1992: 558–559). When Tyson, the supreme anatomist of the seventeenth century, obtained only the second specimen


of an anthropoid ape to be seen in Europe, therefore, he produced a detailed and masterly anatomical description of it (Tyson, 1699; Montagu,1943).14

PRIMATE STAFF

Tyson’s “Orang-Outang” (in fact a chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes (Blumenbach)), placed on the Great Chain of Being “as an intermediate Link between an Ape and a Man” held a staff, and that held by Stubbs’s depicted “Drill” may be an allusion to this earlier representation.3 Such sticks can be read as proofs of the apes’ proximity to man, but also of their less-than-human status, in needing extra help to remain erect (Douthwaite, 1994: 183), a stance criticised as unnatural for apes by Camper in 1778 (1803: 61–2, 145; Hunter, 1861: 1: 40, 43).15 But, as Lord Monboddo wrote to Sir John Pringle on 16 June 1773: “I think I have given a better reason than [Linnaeus] has done for the Orang-Outang [chimpanzee] belonging to us, I mean, his use of a stick” (Knight, 1900).16

Such supporting staves come from an even older tradition, as shown by Breydenbach’s

Figure 2. Pennant’s “Dog-faced monkey”, the hamadryas baboon, Papio hamadryas (L.) 1758, taken “from a drawing by Mr Edwards ... engraved by himself but never published, 14 July 1770” (Pennant, 1771: xxii, 108, plate XIV; 1793: 194–195).10 Reproduced by permission of Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections.



Figure 3. Buffon’s wood baboon, an immature drill, Mandrillus leucophaeus (F. Cuvier) 1807, engraved by Elis. Haussard after Pennant’s 1781 engraving10 by Peter Mazell, itself based on a specimen in the Leverian Museum (Buffon, 1789: 39, plate VII) (Figure 6, see p. 25). Reproduced by permission of Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections.



Figure 4. “Le Jocko” of Buffon (1766: 82, plate 1), a chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes (Blumenbach) 1779, engraving by Justus Chevillet after a drawing by Jacques de Sève, based on a poorly mounted specimen in the Cabinet du Roi, Paris (Camper, 1803: 57–62; Dobson, 1953: 7, 8, fi gure 6) (see note 13, p. 34). Reproduced by permission of Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections.



1483 illustration of what has been interpreted as a hamadryas baboon (Janson, 1952: 334), but more plausibly as a lion-tailed macaque, Macaca silenus (L.) (Figure 7), or a douc langur, Pygathrix nemaeus (L.) (Hill, 1966: 15; see also Ashworth, 1985: fi gure 9; Kemp, 1990: fi gure 19). Many of the widespread eighteenth-century examples of the depiction of such staves supporting primates are noted by Yerkes and Yerkes (1929), Janson (1952) and Spencer (1995). Although wild men were subjects of this debate, they were usually shown carrying heavy clubs or tree trunks, rather than staves (Bernheimer, 1952: 1; Douthwaite, 1994). Staves continued to be used in illustrations (Bewick, 1790: 389; Shaw, 1792: 69, 201) even after the anatomical distinction of humans from apes had been shown by Camper, Blumenbach and others in the late eighteenth century (Figures 5–7). Care has to be exercised in interpreting all such primate illustrations incorporating a staff as solely symbolic, since some may also have served other purposes. Thus, Pennant’s partly shaved beaker-raising mandrill had been trained to use his staff: “Taking a Glass of Ale in his hand like a Christian, [he] drinks it, [and] also plays at Quarter Staff” (Pennant, 1771: 102; Altick, 1978: 38; Hill, 1970: plate 17).

Although Tyson carefully tabulated the resemblances of chimpanzee to monkey and human, he exaggerated the humanlike qualities, since he was committed to the idea of a Chain of Being. As Gould (1985) points out, theory always infl uences perception.

Figure 5. Thomas Bewick’s (1790: 389) engraving of the “oran-outang”, actually a chimpanzee. Reproduced by permission of Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections.



Figure 6. George Shaw’s wood baboon, the drill, Mandrillus leucophaeus (F. Cuvier) 1807, engraved by George Noble 1792 after a drawing by C. R. Ryley (Jackson, 1998: 106), based on a specimen in the Leverian Museum (Shaw, 1792: 202). Reproduced by permission of Edinburgh University Library, Department of Special Collections (L*20.71).



Figure 7. George Shaw’s lion-tailed monkey, the macaque, Macaca silenus (L.) 1758 (= Simia ferox Shaw) 1792, engraved by William Skelton 1791 after a drawing by C. R. Ryley, based on a specimen in the Leverian Museum (Shaw, 1792: 69). Reproduced by permission of Edinburgh University Library, Department of Special Collections (L*20.71).



CONJECTURAL HISTORY OF APES

A central framework of anthropology in its eighteenth-century context was known as conjectural history, an approach initiated by Hume (1757).17 The term was coined in 1793 by Stewart, who commented that it “coincides pretty nearly in its meaning with that of Natural History, as employed by Mr Hume” (Broadie, 1997: 25–27, 669–674). What was (and is) “interesting are facts perceived within a context that explains them”. Conjectural history is thus not simply “an echo of some dark idea of prehistory” (Cross, 1981: 2). It aimed to reconstruct how human nature must or might have changed during savage man’s passage from nature to culture, especially in its physical and moral dimensions (Garrett, 2003). Buffon was its greatest exponent in the fi eld of natural history, and conjectural history had its heyday between 1750 and 1800 (Wokler, 1995: 33, 35, 46).

Rousseau’s 1755 Discourse on the origins of inequality (see Masters and Kelly, 1992) was a key work in this context, since it regarded apes as progenitors of mankind. This view was elaborated by Lord Monboddo (Burnet, 1773) who thought apes should not be denied membership of the human race just because they have not “come the length of language” (Wokler, 1995: 44; Cloyd, 1972; Thomas, 1983: 130; Henderson, 2000) (Figure 8).18 Topical amusement over these issues is illustrated by the 1766 cartoon, based on a sketch by Boswell, showing Rousseau as “The Savage Man” holding the identifying club. In the background a chimpanzee, complete with staff, drawn from life in 1738 by Gravelot, engraved by Scotin and inscribed for Sloane (Schiebinger, 1994: 104, fi gure 3.10; Allen, 2002: 143), utters Rousseau’s thesis: “The Inequality of Mankind” (Finlayson, 1984: 86; Jones, 1986: 48).

Monboddo, “an Elzevir Dr Johnson”, also wrote in the previously cited letter to Pringle that “the large monkeys, or baboons, appear to me to stand in the same relation to us that the ass does to the horse. ... For it is certain, as you observe, that the baboon has a desire

Figure 8. John Kay’s 1787 engraving of Lord Monboddo (left) and James Hutton. According to James Paterson, it “represents these celebrated individuals in the discussion of some abstruse point, which the Doctor has apparently at his “fi nger-ends”. The small fi gure with the tail, in the back ground, is in allusion to Monboddo’s eccentric notions as to the original state of the human species” (Kay, 1837: 247, plate XCIX; see Evans and Evans, 1980: 51). The “Demonstration” title may refer to Locke’s “concept of ... making evident the relations between ideas” (Yolton, 1993: 60). The left hand image (not reproduced) of this three-fold engraving is titled “Conversation”.



for our females, and – if we can believe the Swedish traveller, Roeping – they copulate together”.19 Buffon (1766), Linnaeus and Voltaire similarly accepted reports of the capture of young girls by chimpanzees in Angola, based on early accounts of supposed human/ape hybrids, Voltaire’s ‘satyrs’ (Janson, 1952: 276; Thomas, 1983: 132, 135; Sloan, 1995; Moran, 1993: 48; Barnard, 1995b: 99; Ritvo, 1997: 92). Buffon asserted that some animals, such as the lion and notably man, were so noble that they were unable to interbreed with animals of a different sort, and were thus “beyond any suspicion of degradation” (Wokler, 1976: 2315). Yet Rousseau had subtly proposed cross-breeding chimpanzee with human, as an experiment “not unworthy of the Aristotles and Plinys of our century ... necessary to achieve knowledge of natural man” (Masters and Kelly, 1992: 13, 83; Gourevitch, 1988: 46).20

There is no mention of such conjectural history in the surviving works of John Hunter, who is thought to have commissioned Stubbs’s painting. Indeed, Hunter followed the dictum that observation and experiment must precede generalization. As he famously wrote in 1775 to Jenner, who had offered a conjectural explanation of a phenomenon: “I think your solution is just; but why think, why not trie the Expt.” (Palmer, 1837: 1: 56; Dobson, 1969: 152; Gruber, 2004: 902; Slaney, 1995 (facsimile); Moore, 2005: endpapers, 11). Nor can we know what was in Stubbs’s mind when he painted the drill with his staff. Yet these ideas were much discussed at this time, and Stubbs would have known of them.

GRADATION

John Hunter was a keen exponent of gradation, one of the key concepts of the Great Chain of Being (Cross 1981: 19).3 He was therefore interested in man’s place among animals, no doubt infl uenced by Buffon’s 1749 Premier Discours, a copy of which he owned (Dempster, 1975; Sloan, 1995: 112).11

On one of the days between 25 and 31 May 1788, Hunter opened his museum to

a considerable number of the Literati, in which were included several members of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, the College of Physicians, and many foreigners of distinction. What principally attracted the notice of the Cognoscenti was Mr Hunter’s novel and curious system of natural philosophy running progressively from the lowest scale of vegetable up to Animal Nature. ... Mr Hunter attended himself, and gave a kind of peripatetic lecture on the several articles, which took up between two and three hours. (London chronicle, 5–7 June 1788, 63 (4932): 547; Moore, 2005: 351.)

An anonymous account in The Times of 24 June 1788 (p. 2) summarised Hunter’s views that he gave during this “peripatetic lecture”:

Among the numerous and valuable curiosities, collected by Mr John Hunter, and preserved in his Museum, there is no greater than his collection of skulls. There is regular and continued gradation of these from the most imperfect of the animal, to the most perfect of the human species. The most perfect human skull is the European; the most imperfect of this species is the negro. The European, the negro and the monkey, form a regular series. Mr Hunter, on Saturday, facetiously observed, that, in placing the negro above the monkey great honour was due to him; for although a man, he could hardly be called a brother. He also remarked, that our fi rst parents, Adam and Eve, were indisputably black. This is quite a new idea; but Mr Hunter observed it might be proved without diffi culty.

The series of skulls illustrated in Reynolds’s 1786–1789 portrait of John Hunter probably illustrates this view (Figure 9), although this calls into question Keith’s (1928) interpretation of one of the skulls as Australian aboriginal rather than Negro (White, 1799: 144; LeFanu, 1958: 20; Dobson, 1969: 264; Brock, 1971; Dempster, 1975: 94; Qvist, 1979; Rolfe, 1985:


316–317, fi gure 10.8). Two of Hunter’s manuscript volumes, devoted to “The Monkey and its gradations” and “Comparative Physiology – Comparison between Man and the Monkey”, were among the many papers destroyed by Sir Everard Home in 1823, although it is clear that Hunter regarded the monkey as “the middle stage” between man and beast (Hunter, 1861: 1: 43; 2: 495; Fitzwilliams, 1949; Dobson, 1953: 10; Allen et alii, 1993: xii; Moore, 2005: 365, 372).

Charles White, a fellow student with John Hunter under William Hunter, later illustrated

Figure 9. Detail from William Sharp’s 1 January 1788 engraving of Reynolds’ 1786–1789 portrait of John Hunter, “indicating his ideas of gradation” (Home, 1794; see White, 1799: 144, n. 7; Cross, 1981: 86, n.51; Dobson, 1969: 264). Keith (1928) suggested the skull series ran from European human and Australian aboriginal (top), through chimpanzee and macaque monkey (middle) to dog and crocodile (bottom), but see text. The open volume depicted is one of those destroyed by Everard Home in 1823; the other two volumes, “Natural history of vegetables” and “Natural history of fossils”, are not in The Royal College of Surgeons of England (Brock, 1991). Reproduced by courtesy of Glasgow University Hunterian Art Gallery.



this series (1799; Thomas, 1983: 136; Gould, 1985: 287; Rolfe, 1985: 316, n. 87).21 John’s ongoing interest in this topic is further shown by his brother-in-law Robert Home’s portrait of him, with a monkey skull (Taylor, 1993: fi gure 6; Beasley, 2000: 29; Moore, 2005: 171).22 It is thought that the skull was painted over at an unrecorded date, and revealed only when the painting was cleaned; certainly its absence can be noted in H. Cook’s engraving (Pettigrew, 1839: 2: number 7; Keith, 1928: fi gure 4) and Dobson’s (1969: plate 1) reproduction of the painting.

MACAQUES AND MUTENESS

Stubbs’s paintings (1774, and another version dated 1798) of a Malayan long-tailed, or crab-eating macaque, also known as Buffon’s macaque, Macaca fascicularis (Raffl es) (Hill, 1974: 476; Egerton, 1976, 1984: 122; Martinez-Contreras, 1992: 560; Smith, 2001: 31; Blake, 2005: 208), are therefore of added interest in this context.23 This young monkey is depicted holding a peach24, the possible symbolic signifi cance of which seems hitherto to have been overlooked, except by Paulson (1975: 163, n. 22), who suggested it was a “half-remembered prototype ... of the Fall”.25 Such a peach, with leaf attached, denotes the heart and tongue speaking with one mind and is therefore a symbol of truth (Cooper, 1978; Hall, 1979, 1994).26 According to Ripa’s Iconologia, the 1630 Paduan edition of which is in William Hunter’s library, the peach was sacred to the Egyptian god Harpocrates, and symbolised the virtue of silence (Williamson, 1986: 154). Is this perhaps a reference to the idea expressed in Rousseau’s 1766 letter to Hume, in which, “according to Negro observers, it was a ‘trick of monkeys’ ... to pretend that they cannot speak, although they really can, ‘out of fear that they might otherwise be made to work’” (Wokler, 1978: 114, n.24) or be enslaved, a suggestion dating from at least 1623? Rousseau thus regarded their muteness as an indication of their higher rationality (Wokler, 1995: 44). In the 1770s, Monboddo pursued the idea further, suggesting that language was not natural to our species. Furthermore, what were vocal organs of chimpanzees for, if not for speech? Was God so uneconomical as to engage in redundant design (Wokler, 1988: 149)?

One other macaque drawing by Stubbs, made between 1795 and 1805, of a fl ayed cadaver of a Barbary ‘ape’ Macaca sylvanus (L.), is reproduced in Taylor (1975: 216, fi gure 130).27 This species lacks tail vertebrae, so “differs from other macaques in the total absence of an external tail” (Hill, 1974: 199, 616). It was the Pithekos of Aristotle, being more widely distributed during classical times, which thereby provided a general portrait of the tailless ‘apes’ of Africa and Asia (Spencer, 1995: 13). This macaque was widespread in Africa, and via the Mediterranean to Italy (Hill, 1966: 4). Its depiction by Stubbs shows that he had therefore seen and portrayed all three main types of monkeys and ‘apes’ as perceived at that time: monkeys, baboons and ‘apes’.

Taylor described the drawing as an anatomical study, but the image suggests the specimen was desiccated rather than dissected. It may therefore represent a continuation of the practice noted by Pennant (1771: 100–101; 1793: 183): “The Indians taking advantage of the credulity of people, embalmed this species of ape with spices and sold them to merchants as true pygmies.”28


TAIL PIECE

Although Aristotle had recognised the three nonhuman primate types, it was Ray (1693: 149) who clarifi ed them, using the tail as the main distinguishing character. As Bewick (1790: 387) summarised it, following Pennant’s own (1771: 95; 1781; 1793: 179) synopsis of Ray: “APES, or such as have no tails; BABOONS, or such as have short tails; MONKIES, or such as have long tails”. The hamadryas baboon though, as Bewick noted, “is distinguished by a longer tail than the rest of its kind: in this respect, it seems to bear some affi nity to the Monkey”. This led Bewick into a discussion of gradation, and the diffi culty of fi xing boundaries between the dif-ferent “classes” of monkey: baboons seemed to be the link between monkeys and apes, a point noted also by White (1799: 24). It accounts for the fi xation that Monboddo developed with that organ. In his Origin and progress of language (Burnet, 1773), Monboddo gives several accounts of the existence, in various parts of the world, of men with tails, as Pliny had previously asserted, and Linnaeus had accepted (Lovejoy, 1933: 52; Thomas, 1983: 134). He included “a teacher of mathematics in Inverness who had a tail half a foot long”, and reputedly he questioned Solander, on his 1771 return from Cook’s voyage, about the Australian aboriginals: “ Have they tails?” (Reid, 1968: 288). This solicitude for what Lovejoy calls “that pleasing and useful member” led to much witty conversation and versifi cation. “Lord Monboddo when he talks of men with tails”, wrote Mrs Thrale, “sets all those who have none o’laughin” (Sherwin, 1958: 459). As his fellow Court of Session judge Lord Neaves put it (Sherwin, 1958: 467):

The rise of Man he loved to traceUp to the very pod, O!

And in Baboons our parent raceWas found by old Monboddo.

Their ABC he made them speakAnd learn their qui quae quod, O!

Till Hebrew, Latin, Welsh, and GreekThey knew as well’s Monboddo.

But Monboddo was serious (Lovejoy, 1933: 53):

Those who have not studied the variety of nature in animals, and particularly in man, the most various of all animals, will think this story, of men with tails, very ridiculous: and will laugh at the credulity of the author for seeming to believe such stories; But the philosopher, who is more disposed to inquire than to laugh and deride, will not reject it at once, as a thing incredible, that there should be such a variety in our species, as well as in the simian tribe, which is of so near kin to us.

Interest in Monboddo has revived because current debates in social and biological anthropology and linguistics mirror those of the eighteenth century (Barnard, 1995a: 72)

It is noteworthy therefore that the short tail of the drill and the long tail of the hamadryas and macaque are clearly depicted in Stubbs’s paintings of these animals. Is it too fanciful to suggest that the attitude of the drill in Stubbs’s painting, erect, and fi xing the viewer with his gaze which glares out of the painting (Koenderink et alii, 2004), is gesturing upward to indicate that he, with his short tail is on the higher side of the Great Chain, toward ape, man, angel and God?29 The hamadryas, however, with his long tail, sits, grooms and looks down, metaphorically knowing his place to be lower down the Chain?


CONCLUSION

Such conjectural history caused much interest among the comparative anatomists, and led to them focussing on the strictly anatomical distinctions between humans and apes, and thus to the eventual separation of physical from social anthropology (Wokler, 1995: 46). It is impossible now to know if such speculation lay behind John Hunter’s commission of Stubbs’s painting. The only documentation that survives is his report on the dissection of these two outstandingly depicted primates, published posthumously (Hunter, 1861: 2: 16–19).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Ian Rolfe: a preliminary version of this paper was presented at a public seminar on “Stubbs and the Hunter brothers”, held on 1 October 2004 at the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery. This took place at the conclusion of their exhibition displaying Stubbs’s “Drill and albino hamadryas baboon” as part of the preparation for the museum’s 2007 bicentenary; I am indebted to Anne Dulau for that invitation. Simon Chaplin of the Hunterian Museum, The Royal College of Surgeons of England, answered many queries and generously provided the quotation from The Times of 1788. For other assistance and helpful discussion I thank Kate Mackay and Julia Rayer Rolfe, and for further help I am obliged to Special Collection librarians of the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, the National Library of Scotland, the National Galleries of Scotland, P. Basler, J. Crispin, K. Fairnie, S. Foister, M. Hopkinson, J. and P. Jones, L. Keppie, A.Kidson, J. Ramkalawon and M. Ridd.

Caroline Grigson: I too thank Simon Chaplin for helpful discussion, and the library staff at The Royal College of Surgeons of England and at The Natural History Museum, London, for much assistance.

NOTES

1 “It is nature herself”, exclaimed Diderot in 1763, of Chardin’s painting (Kemp, 1975: 23; Rosenberg and Temperini, 2000: 126). Unusually for the time, William Hunter owned three paintings by Chardin (McLaren Young, 1952).

2 A 1773 catalogue of London sights asserted that there were “Lions, tygers, elephants &c in every street in town” (Altick, 1978: 35; Myrone, 2002: 45). Some idea of this is given by Eckstein’s 1798 watercolour of the camel outside Pidcock’s menagerie in Exeter ‘Change in the Strand (Oppé, 1950: plate 49).

For Stubbs’s exotic animal paintings see LeFanu (1960), Taylor (1975) and Egerton (1976, 1984).3 A reference to the Great Chain of Being, an idea dating back to Aristotle and Plato. According to this originally

static, hierarchic and linear concept, a continuous chain extended from inert matter and stones through laminated stones and plants via lithophytes, zoophytes, through what today we would call invertebrate animals eventually to quadrupeds, man and up through the Realms of Angels to God. The idea was being questioned in the later part of the eighteenth century, and becoming diversifi ed by branching trees and other less linear diagrammatic representations (Anderson, 1976; Barsanti, 1992; Bynum, 1975; Dougherty, 1995; Gould, 1985: 264, 281; Lovejoy, 1936; Rolfe, 1985; Thijssen, 1995).

4 William Hunter (1771: 177) gives a vivid account of why such dissection was necessary, in his own description of another animal new to Britain, the Indian bovid known as the nilgai, Boselaphus tragocamelus (Pallas):

When a new animal is presented to us, it will often be diffi cult, and sometimes impossible, to determine its species, by the external characters alone. But when such an animal is dissected by an anatomist, who is a master in comparative anatomy, the question is commonly to be decided with certainty. From the external marks alone, I suspected, or rather believed, the nyl-ghau to be a peculiar and distinct species.... At length, in consequence of the death of one of them, I was assured by my brother, who dissected it, and who has dissected with great attention almost every known quadrupede, that the nyl-ghau is a new species.

5 LeFanu added, from Clift’s MSS, that the individual albino hamadryas baboon portrayed by Stubbs was called the “Child of the Sun, probably by a showman”, but Clift also corrected its gender. The relevant note by Clift (ms 49.e.53, p.71 – see note 8 below) states:

469 Parts of Generation, male, Child of the Sun 2624. Sir Everard Home told me (on being asked some years


since) that this Child of the Sun is the white monkey or baboon which is represented in a Picture by Stubbs in the College Library. Perhaps it was the showman’s name for this animal ... but that in the picture is, I believe, a female, examine, if so – ? If a male it is this without a doubt ... Yes it is a male W.C. Sept 16 1828

The name “Child of the Sun” was used for many different individual monkeys imported into Britain, usually for pale-coloured animals, especially the male hamadryas baboon, whose coat is a very light grey. Presumably the term was a light-hearted reference to this species’ sacred status as the “Child of the Sun” in ancient Egypt. When Clift used the term, however, he was always referring to the albino animal depicted by Stubbs (see note 8 below). There is therefore no reason to believe that this was the same individual animal referred to by that term in a 1789 letter from Philip Thicknesse to Monboddo: “He understood everything said to him by his keeper, and had more sense than half the brutes erect we meet in the streets” (Sherwin, 1958: 454). “The Child of the Sky... the long lost link between the Human and Brute Creation”, displayed toward the end of the century, may be another reference to this individual (Altick, 1978: 38). The latter part of this quotation recalls John Hunter’s comment on The difference between man and the monkey: “The monkey in general may be said to be half beast and half man; it may be said to be the middle stage” (Hunter, 1861: 1: 43).

6 William Fitzmaurice, Lord Shelburne, prime minister 1782; from 30 November 1784, Marquis of Lansdowne. “From his love of natural knowledge” he helped William Hunter with his mastodon work, and in 1767 gave him several fragments of mastodon (Hunter, 1768). At the same time he presented the jaw to be fi gured by Hunter to the British Museum, where it is now displayed in the 2003 “Enlightenment” gallery. In the late 1760s, Shelburne offered fi nancial support to William Hunter’s scheme for an anatomical school (Brock, 1983: 24). Shelburne had his own menagerie (Lever, 1992: 15) where Stubbs made studies of a caged lion (Taylor, 1965: 85; Egerton, 1976: 30; 1984: 90, 92; Hall, 2000: 73, 206; Warner and Blake, 2004: 73); he owned fi ve of Stubbs’s prints (Lennox-Boyd et alii, 1989: 28, 39). John Hunter corresponded with Shelburne in 1782 (Dobson, 1969: 227; Moore, 2005: 302).

7 Dobson (1969: 182) states that Lord Shelburne gave Hunter a “black monkey”, which she interpreted as what we now know to be the drill depicted by Stubbs. This seems to be a confusion, since John Hunter’s “large black monkey from Lord Shelburne” was identifi ed as the gibbon, Hylobates, by Owen (in Hunter, 1861: 2: 8). Hunterian preparations, no longer extant, of the heart, caecum and vermiform appendix of this animal are recorded by Clift and Owen (1831: 4, 25; see Sloan, 2004: 125), who also note that “The animal was presented to Mr Hunter by Lord Shelburne”. One other preparation of this gibbon, the tongue and larynx, does survive (Clift and Owen, 1835: 84 number 1523; Dobson, 1970: 206).

8 By that date the catalogue numbers had reached 561. These preparations were recorded as follows: 469 (see note 5 above); 470 Part of the Tongue of ditto (Child of the Sun); 476 Larynx. Child of the Sun. (see Dobson, 1970: 149 number 1173, destroyed by bombing 1941); 488 Larynx of large monkey in Stubb’s Picture”

By elimination of “476 Larynx ...”, 488 must be of the drill (see Dobson, 1970: 205, number 1520, extant). The relevant catalogue in the library of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, London is ms 49.e.53

“Copy of the Oldest Part of the Catalogue in 8vo”, prepared by Clift in 1824, with his later marginal additions, some of which are dated.

9 A review of Stubbs’s work in the context of contemporaneous zoological illustration is given by Lennox-Boyd et alii (1989: 56–60).

10 Pennant (1771: xxii, 108) notes that his “Dog-faced monkey” (= hamadryas baboon (Hill, 1970: 348)) was shown in London “some years ago”, and that the account and illustration was taken “from a drawing by Mr Edwards ... engraved by himself but never published, 14 July 1770” (Pennant, 1793: 194–195) (Figure 2). The drill does not appear in Pennant 1771 and is fi rst illustrated by him in 1781 (p. 191, plate XLII), and republished in 1793, as the “Wood baboon and Cinereous baboon” (Hill, 1966: 20; 1970: 490). This was based on a specimen in the Leverian Museum, perhaps that illustrated by Shaw (1792: 201) which, interestingly for comparison with Stubbs’s painting, holds a staff (Figure 6, p. 25).

John Hunter lived on the east side of Leicester Square from 1783; the Leverian Museum was located on the north side of the same square until 1787 (Dobson, 1969: 235; Jackson, 1998: 72, n. 12).

Pennant corresponded with William Hunter about the nilgai in 1770 (Brock, 1996: 45). Dürer had accurately depicted the hamadryas baboon in a colour drawing of 1521 (Janson, 1952: 350, n. 34;

Hill, 1970: 10; Wynne, 2003: 57). For confusion of baboons with macaques, including Macaca fascicularis, see Hill (1970: 256).11 The sale catalogue of John Hunter’s library lists “Buffon Histoire Naturelle, 15 vol. elegantly bound and 11

vol. in boards” (Anonymous 1794: 3, no. 23). The “15 vol.” probably represents the fi rst edition of 1749–1767, but the other “11 vol. in boards” could be of any date or edition, so could include the Suppléments volumes 1–7


(1774–1789).12 William Hunter bought his copy of the 1543 De humanis corporis fabrica at Dr Richard Mead’s 1754 sale,

together with a copy of Tintoretto’s portrait, then thought to be of Vesalius (McLaren Young, 1952: 22).13 Buffon was uncertain of the relationship between orang utan and chimpanzee – was one a juvenile of the other,

or were they two different races within the one species (Sloan, 1995: 148, n. 84)? Martinez-Contreras (1992: 560) suggests that Buffon’s 1766 Jocko confl ated juveniles of chimpanzee and orang utan, whereas his Pongo was a composite based on adults of these two species; both Jocko (Figure 4, p. 23) and Pongo were regarded as separate species by Buffon. The young of both these species are indeed very similar, and resemble human babies. For previous confusion of baboons with macaques, including M. fascicularis, see Hill (1970: 256).

Another source of diffi culty, noted of Buffon’s specimen of a lion-tailed macaque, was that it

had a mutilated tail; in consequence of which it does not convey a proper idea of the species. ...These accidental mutilations ... are productive of considerable errors in the descriptions of authors, and no small confusion has resulted from this cause in the arrangement and enumeration of the different species of the Simiae, which with every assistance of fi gures and descriptions is yet involved in considerable obscurity. (Shaw, 1792: 72.)

14 William Hunter’s familiarity with Tyson’s 1699 volume, which he had in his library (Ferguson and Smith, 1930), may be indicated by a striking similarity of phrase used by both. Tyson notes that “By following nature’s clew in this wonderful labyrinth of the creation, we may be more easily admitted into her secret recesses, which thread if we miss, we must needs err and be bewilder’d” (Gould, 1985: 271). Compare that with Hunter (1784: 4): “And it may be said, that nature, in thus varying and multiplying her productions, has hung out a train of lights that guide us through her labyrinth.”

15 For theories of primate bipedalism see Dawkins (2004: 80–87) and Falk (2005).16 The lawyer James Burnet (1714–1799) became the judge Lord Monboddo in 1767; he was a leading Scottish

Enlightenment fi gure (Burnet, 1773).17 John Hunter’s wife, Anne Home (1742–1821), was related to Hume (Greig 1932: 324, n. 4). Hume was also

a friend and correspondent of William Hunter (Kemp, 1975: 20; Brock, 1983: 58).18 Monboddo (Burnet 1773) argued that language had progressively developed from the naturally languageless

condition of the chimpanzee, through the primitive languages of the New World and ancestral languages of Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, to the highly developed languages of Europe. “Through the study of language itself, Lord Monboddo and others believed, one could trace the history of human progress, and even ‘enter into the thoughts that guided earlier peoples’” (Fox, 1995: 19). Falk (2005) suggests a current hypothesis for the origin of language.

19 Such a proximity had been thought earlier: “so uncertain are the boundaries of species of animals to us” that it was thought to be only by some arbitrary and typological defi nition framed by us that we can say: “this is a Man, That a drill” (Locke, 1690: 218, 222; Lovejoy, 1936: 229; Mayr, 1976: 257).

20 An artifi cial insemination progamme to achieve this was proposed in the early twentieth century, encouraged by Haeckel (de Rooy, 1995).

“Oliver”, a living, supposed chimp/bonobo hybrid, or a new subspecies, or even a ‘humanzee’, has attracted much media attention since 1970. Although atypical in some respects, genetic study of Oliver proves him to be pure chimpanzee (Holden, 1998).

21 The outlines for White’s series of heads were copied from Camper (1791, 1794: fi gure II). White “acknowledged Hunter as a mentor, dedicating his 1773 textbook ‘to William Hunter...fi rst among equals’” (Shorter, 1985: 380). White’s notes of William Hunter’s 1752 lectures on anatomy have been published (Dowd, 1972).

Edinburgh University Library’s copy of White (1799) (Special Collections E.B.F.575 Whi.) bears a fl ourished manuscript comment above the “Table of contents”, in a nineteenth-century hand, indicating one reader’s reaction to this work: “Read your Bible and you will have the one true account.”

22 Another portrait exists with the sitter pointing to a macaque skull held in his left hand (Keith, 1928: 207, fi gure 2; Dempster, 1975: 87; Taylor, 1993: fi gure 9; Beasley, 2000: 14). Although cogently argued by Keith to be a portrait of John Hunter, this is not securely established, and it may be of Dr John Hunter of Knap, who wrote an anthropological dissertation (Hunter, 1775; Wilkinson, 1982).

23 Probably called Buffon’s macaque since Buffon (1766) was the fi rst to use the word macaque for this species (Hill, 1974: 194, 196, 476, 479).

24 Although Napier and Hills (in Egerton, 1976: 61; 1984: 122) state this macaque “is unlikely to have been instinctively disposed to eat the rich fruit it is here displayed with”, fruit at 32% ranks highest in its dietary proportions, if all human food sources are excluded (it is noted for its commensalism with humans: Wheatley, 1999: 58). Buffon (1766: plate 20: coloured copy in Tompkins 1994: 105) depicted it holding a papaya.


25 The Fall was viewed as a revolt of the lower nature against reason, after it “men had ranged over the earth like animals, only slowly developing the social virtues” (Thomas, 1983: 131).

26 “Everything that comes from nature will be true”, according to Rousseau (1755, see Masters and Kelly, 1992: 19), and “the natural appetite or taste of the human mind is for truth” declared Reynolds in his 1776 presidential Discourse to The Royal Academy (1777: 10; Wark, 1959: 122; Hall, 2000: 22). William Hunter had his own personal set of Reynolds’s Discourses (1769–1777), inscribed “To Dr Hunter from the author” (Glasgow University Library, Hunterian Em.1.10; Kemp, 1975: 22; 1992). In his own 1770 Discourse to The Royal Academy, William Hunter regarded the study of anatomy by artists as a “Truth” (Kemp, 1975: 32). Myrone (2002: 73, but compare Deuchar, 1985) has suggested that Stubbs’s last, incomplete work, his “Comparative anatomy drawings”, are

a fi nal monument of the Enlightenment belief in the power of art to persuade us of truth. ... His paintings of animals, even of men, ask us to fi nd in the descriptions of surfaces and structures some kind of truth. It is the question that is asked by Stubbs’s art as a whole.

27 This drawing is now in the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, Accession number B1980.1.126. Hundreds of other drawings by Stubbs have vanished, including a sketchbook with twelve monkeys (Grigson, 1948: 13; Taylor, 1975: 9, n. 5; Egerton, 1984: 18).

28 Pennant here cites Gessner (1551). An amplifi ed English translation of the key passage is given by Topsell (1658: 3):

In the region of Basman ... are many and diverse sorts of Apes, very like mankind, which when the Hunters take, they pull of [sic] their hairs all but the beard and the [w]hole behind, and afterward dry them with hot spices, and poudering them, sell them to Merchants, who carry them about the world, persuading simple people that there are men in Islands of no great stature.

29 For Thomas Jefferson’s 1781–1782 speciesist and racist “upward striving”, see Janson (1952: 276).

REFERENCES

ALLEN, E., TURK, J. L. and MURLEY, R., 1993 The case books of John Hunter FRS. London: Royal College of Medicine Services. Pp [28], 699.

ALLEN, J., 2002 Samuel Johnson’s menagerie – the beastly lives of exotic quadrupeds in the eighteenth century. Norwich: Erskine Press. Pp xii, 180.

ALTICK, R. D., 1978 The shows of London. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pp xii, 553.

ANDERSON, L., 1976 Charles Bonnet’s taxonomy and chain of being. Journal of the history of ideas 37: 45–58.

ANONYMOUS, 1794 A catalogue of the valuable well-chosen select library of scarce books, the property of the late John Hunter ... which will be sold by auction ... by Mr. Christie ... February the 1st, 1794 ... . [London]: Christie. Pp 4.

ASHWORTH, W. B., 1985 The persistent beast: recurring images in early zoological illustration, pp 46–66 in ELLENIUS, A. (editor), The natural sciences and the arts. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis fi gura, new series, 22.

BARNARD, A., 1995a Monboddo’s orang outang and the defi nition of man, pp 71–85 in CORBEY, R. and THEUNISSEN, B. (q.v.).

BARNARD, A., 1995b Orang outang and the defi nition of man: the legacy of Lord Monboddo, pp 95–112 in VERMEULEN, H. F. and ROLDAN, A. A.(editors), Fieldwork and footnotes: studies in the history of European anthropology. London & New York: Routledge. Pp xiv, 261.

BARNARD, A., 2002 Anthropology, race, and Englishness: changing notions of complexion and character. Eighteenth-century life 25 (3): 94–102.

BARSANTI, G., 1992 Buffon et l’image de la nature: de l’échelle des êtres à la carte géographique et à l’arbre généalogique, pp 255–296 in BEAUNE, J.-C. et alii (q.v.).

BEASLEY, A.W., 2000 Home away from home. Wellington: Central Institute of Technology & Grantham House Publishing. Pp 158.


BEAUNE, J.-C., BENOIT, S., GAYON, J., ROGER, J. and WORONOFF, D. (editors), Buffon 88: Actes du colloque international pour le bicentenaire de la mort de Buffon. Paris, Vrin: Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Études Épistémologiques. Pp ix, 771, 5.

BERNHEIMER, R., 1952 Wild men in the Middle Ages: a study in art, sentiment, and demonology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Pp xiii, 224.

BEWICK, T., 1790 A general history of quadrupeds. Newcastle upon Tyne: S. Hodgson, R. Beilby & T. Bewick. Pp x, 456.

BLAKE, R., 2005 George Stubbs and the wide creation. London: Chatto & Windus. Pp xxviii, 372.

BROADIE, A. (editor), 1997 The Scottish enlightenment: an anthology. Edinburgh: Canongate Books. Pp xi, 820.

BROCK, C. H. (editor), 1983 William Hunter 1718–1983: a memoir by Samuel Foart Simmons and John Hunter. Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press. Pp xviii, [2], 81.

BROCK, C.H., 1996 Calendar of the correspondence of Dr William Hunter 1740–1783. Cambridge: Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine. Pp [6], xiv, 124.

BROCK, R. C. (Lord Brock), 1971 Background details in Reynolds’s portrait of John Hunter. Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England 48: 219–266.

BUFFON, G.-L. Leclerc, Comte de, 1749 Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière. Volume 1. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. Pp vi, 612.

BUFFON, G.-L. Leclerc, Comte de, 1766 Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière. Volume 14. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. Pp v, 412.

BUFFON, G.-L. Leclerc, Comte de, 1789 Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière. Supplément 7. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. Pp xxi; 364.

BURNET, J., 1773 Of the origin and progress of language. Edinburgh: Kincaid & Creech. 6 volumes. (Facsimile 1967. Menston: Scolar Press.)

BYNUM, W.F., 1975 The great chain of being after forty years: an appraisal. History of science 13: 1–28.

BYNUM, W. F. and PORTER, R. (editors), 1985 William Hunter and the eighteenth-century medical world. Cambridge: University Press. Pp xii, 424.

CAMPER, P., 1791 Dissertation physique de Mr. Pierre Camper, sur les différences réelles que présentent les traits du visage chez les hommes ... . Utrecht : B. Wild & J. Altheer. Pp viii, 114, [2].

CAMPER, P., 1794 The works of the late Professor Camper, on the connexion between the science of anatomy, and the art of drawing, painting, statuary, &c.... Translated from the Dutch by T. Cogan, M.D. London: C. Dilly. Pp xxiii, [1], 175, [1].

CAMPER, P., 1803 Oeuvres de Pierre Camper: qui ont pour objet l’histoire naturelle, la physiologie et l’anatomie comparée. Volume 1. Paris: H. J. Jansen.

[CLIFT, W. and OWEN, R., ] 1831 Catalogue of the contents of the museum The Royal College of Surgeons in London. Part 6. Comprehending the vascular and miscellaneous preparations in a dried state. London: [The Royal College of Surgeons of England]. Pp [2], 55, [1].

[CLIFT, W. and OWEN, R., ] 1835 Descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the physiological series of comparative anatomy contained in the museum of The Royal College of Surgeons in London. Volume 3 (1): Nervous system and organs of sense. London: [The Royal College of Surgeons of England]. Pp xx, 208.

CLOYD, E.L., 1972 James Burnett, Lord Monboddo. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pp xvi, 196, [4].

COOPER, J. C., 1978 An illustrated encyclopaedia of traditional symbols. London: Thames & Hudson. Pp 208.

CORBEY, R. and THEUNISSEN, B. (editors), Ape, man, apeman: changing views since 1600 : evaluative proceedings of the symposium, Leiden, the Netherlands, 28 June–1 July 1993. Leiden: Leiden University, Department of Prehistory. Pp ix, 411.

CROSS, S.J., 1981 John Hunter, the animal oeconomy, and late eighteenth-century physiological discourse. Studies in the history of biology 5: 1–110.

DAWKINS, R., 2004 The ancestor’s tale: a pilgrimage to the dawn of life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Pp 528.

DE ROOY, P., 1995 In search of perfection: the creation of a missing link, pp 195–207 in CORBEY, R. and THEUNISSEN, B. (q.v.).


DEMPSTER, W.J., 1975 Hunter the scholar. World medicine 10 (8): 87–96.

DEUCHAR, S., 1985 Book review: George Stubbs 1724–1806, Judy Egerton. Oxford art journal 8(1): 62–66.

DOBSON, J., 1953 John Hunter and the early knowledge of the anthropoid apes. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 123: 1–12.

DOBSON, J., 1954 William Clift. London: William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd. Pp viii, 144.

DOBSON, J., 1962 John Hunter’s animals. Journal of the history of medicine 17: 479–486.

DOBSON, J., 1969 John Hunter. Edinburgh & London: E. & S. Livingston. Pp xvii, 362.

[DOBSON, J.], 1970 Descriptive catalogue of the physiological series in the Hunterian Museum of The Royal College of Surgeons of England. Part I . Surviving Hunterian specimens demonstrating these organs in plants and animals for the special purposes of the individual. Edinburgh & London: E.& S.Livingstone. Pp xv, 292.

DOUGHERTY, F., 1995 Missing link, Chain of Being, ape and man in the enlightenment: the argument of the naturalists, pp 63–70 in CORBEY, R. and THEUNISSEN, B. (q.v.).

DOUTHWAITE, J., 1994 Rewriting the savage: the extraordinary fi ctions of the “Wild girl of Champagne”. Eighteenth-century studies 28: 163–192.

DOWD, N. (editor), 1972 Hunter’s lectures of anatomy. Amsterdam, London, New York: Elsevier. Pp xii, 185, [114].

EGERTON, J., 1976 George Stubbs: anatomist and animal painter. London: Tate Gallery Publications. Pp 248.

EGERTON, J., 1984 George Stubbs 1724–1806. London: Tate Gallery Publications. Pp 64.

EVANS, H. and EVANS, M., 1980 John Kay of Edinburgh: barber, miniaturist and social commentator 1742–1826. Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing. Pp [8], 34, 96, 35–53.

FALK, D., 2005 Prelinguistic evolution in early hominins: whence motherese? Behavioral and brain sciences 27 (4): 491–541.

FERGUSON, M. and SMITH, D.B., 1930 The printed books in the library of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow: a catalogue. Glasgow: Jackson, Wylie & Co. Pp xxiii, 396.

FINLAYSON, I., 1984 The moth and the candle: a life of James Boswell. London: Constable. Pp. xii, 273.

FITZWILLIAMS, D.C.L., 1949 The destruction of John Hunter’s papers. Proceedings of The Royal Society of Medicine 42: 871–876.

FOX, C., 1995 How to prepare a noble savage: the spectacle of human science, pp 1–30 in FOX, C. et alii (q.v.).

FOX, C., PORTER, R. and WOKLER, R. (editors), 1995 Inventing human science: eighteenth-century domains. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Pp x, 357.

GARRETT, A., 2003 Anthropology: the ‘original’ of human nature, pp79–93 in BROADIE, A., (editor), The Cambridge companion to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge: University Press. Pp xvi, 366.

GESSNER, C., 1551 Historiae animalium liber I. de quadrupedis viviparis. Zürich: Froschauer. Pp [20], 1104, [11].

GOULD, S.J., 1985 The fl amingo’s smile: refl ections in natural history. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Co. Pp 476.

GOUREVITCH, V., 1988 Rousseau’s pure state of nature. Interpretation 16: 23–59.

GREIG, J. Y. T. (editor), 1932 The letters of David Hume. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2 volumes.

GRIGSON, G., 1948 George Stubbs, 1724–1806, pp 13–23 (reprinted from Signature 13: 15–32 (1940)) in The harp of Aeolus and other essays on art, literature and nature. London: Routledge. Pp xi, 160.

GRUBER, J. W. and THACKRAY, J., 1992 Richard Owen commemoration. London: Natural History Museum Publications. Pp x, 181.

GRUBER, J. W., 2004 Hunter, John. Oxford dictionary of national biography 28: 898–906. Oxford: University Press.

HALL, J., 1979 Dictionary of subjects and symbols in art. Second edition. London: John Murray. Pp xxx, 349.

HALL, J., 1994 Illustrated dictionary of symbols in eastern and western art. London: John Murray. Pp xii, 244.

HALL, N. H. J. (editor), 2000 Fearful symmetry: George Stubbs, painter of the English enlightenment. New York: Hall & Knight Ltd. Pp 214.


HENDERSON, J.-A., 2000 The origin of ‘The origin of species’, pp 134–139 in The emperor’s new kilt : two secret histories of Scotland. Edinburgh & London: Mainstream Publishing. Pp 207.

HILL, W. C. O., 1966 Primates, comparative anatomy and taxonomy. Volume 6: Catarrhini Cercopithecoidea Cercopithecinae. Edinburgh: University Press. Pp xxiv, 757.

HILL, W. C. O., 1970 Primates, comparative anatomy and taxonomy. Volume 8: Cynopithecinae Papio, Mandrillus, Theropithecus. Edinburgh: University Press. Pp xx, 680.

HILL, W. C. O., 1974 Primates, comparative anatomy and taxonomy. Volume 7: Cynopithecinae Cercocebus, Macaca, Cynopithecus. Edinburgh: University Press. Pp xxii, 934.

HOLDEN, C., 1998 Oliver no humanzee. Science 280: 207.

HOME, E., 1794 A treatise on the blood, infl ammation, and gun-shot wounds. By the late John Hunter. To which is prefi xed, a short account of the author’s life, by his brother-in-law. London : George Nicol. Pp lxvii, 575.

HUME, D., 1757 The natural history of religion, pp 1–117 in Four dissertations. London: A. Millar. Pp [6], vii, 240.

HUNTER, J., 1775 Disputatio inauguralis quaedam de hominum varietatibus et harum causis exponens ... , pp 357–394 in BENDYSHE, T. (editor & translator), 1865 The anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach ... and the inaugural dissertation of John Hunter, M.D. on the varieties of man. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green. Pp xiv [2], 406, 20, 10, [2].

HUNTER, J., 1786 Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. London: [John Hunter]. Pp [3], 1, 225, [18].

HUNTER, J., 1840 Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy...with notes by Richard Owen, F.R.S. Philadelphia: Haswell, Barrington, & Haswell; New Orleans: J. J. Haswell & Co. Pp 479.

HUNTER, J., 1861 (edited by Richard Owen) Essays and observations on natural history, anatomy, physiology, psychology, and geology. London : J. Van Voorst. 2 volumes.

HUNTER, W., 1768 Observations on the bones, commonly supposed to be elephants bones, which have been found near the River Ohio in America. Philosophical transactions of The Royal Society of London 58: 34–45.

HUNTER, W., 1771 An account of the nyl-ghau, an Indian animal, not hitherto described. Philosophical transactions of The Royal Society of London 61: 170–181.

HUNTER, W., 1784 Two introductory lectures delivered by Dr. William Hunter to his last course of anatomical lectures at his theatre in Windmill Street. London: J. Johnson. Pp ii, 130.

JACKSON, C. E., 1998 Sarah Stone: natural curiosities from the new worlds. London: Merrell Holberton & The Natural History Museum. Pp 159.

JANSON, H. W., 1952 Apes and ape lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: The Warburg Institute. Pp 384.

JONES, P., 1986 David Hume, pp 43–67 in DAICHES, D., JONES, P. and JONES, J. (editors), A hotbed of genius: the Scottish Enlightenment 1730–1790. Edinburgh: University Press. Pp xii, 160.

KAY, J., 1837 A series of original portraits and caricature etchings, with biographical sketches and illustrative anecdotes. Volume 1. Edinburgh: H. Paton, 1838. Pp xix, 430, iv, ix.

KEITH, A., 1928 A discourse on the portraits and personality of John Hunter. British medical journal 1: 205–209.

KEITH, A., [1930] Hunterian and other pictures in the museum collection of The Royal College of Surgeons. London: Royal College of Surgeons. Pp 8.

KEMP, M.(editor), 1975 Dr William Hunter at The Royal Academy of Arts. Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press. Pp 47.

KEMP, M., 1990 Taking it on trust: form and meaning in naturalistic representation. Archives of natural history 17: 127–188.

KEMP, M., 1992 True to their natures: Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr William Hunter at the Royal Academy of Arts. Notes and records of The Royal Society of London 46: 77–88.

KNIGHT, W., 1900 Lord Monboddo and some of his contemporaries. London: John Murray. Pp xv, 314, 4.

KOENDERINK, J. J., VAN DOORN, A. J., KAPPERS, A. M. L. and TODD, J. T., 2004 Pointing out of the picture. Perception 33: 513–530.


LEFANU, W., 1958 Notes on Stubbs’s place among the comparative anatomists, pp 19–20 in TAYLOR, B., George Stubbs: rediscovered anatomical drawings from the Free Public Library of Worcester, Massachusetts. [London]: Arts Council of Great Britain. Pp 32, [4].

LEFANU, W., 1960 A catalogue of the portraits and other paintings, drawings and sculpture in The Royal College of Surgeons of England. Edinburgh & London: E. & S.Livingstone. Pp xii, 118.

LENNOX-BOYD, C., DIXON, R and CLAYTON, T., 1989 George Stubbs: the complete engraved works. Abingdon: Stipple Publishing Limited. Pp xx, 411.

LEVER, C., 1992 They dined on eland: the story of the acclimatisation societies. London: Quiller Press. Pp xvi, 224.

LOCKE, J., 1690 An essay concerning humane understanding. London: Thomas Basset. Pp [12], 362, [22]. (Facsimile 1970, together with the most extensive additions to the second edition of 1694. Menston: Scolar Press. Pp [16], 362, [22], [3], 37.)

LOVEJOY, A. O., 1933 Monboddo and Rousseau. Modern philology 30: 275–296. (Reprint 1948, Essays in the history of ideas, pp 38–61. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. Pp xvii, 359.)

LOVEJOY, A. O., 1936 The Great Chain of Being: a study of the history of an idea. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press. Pp xiii, 382.

McLAREN YOUNG, A., 1952 The Hunterian collection: an eighteeenth century gentleman’s cabinet. London: Iveagh Bequest, London County Council. Pp 28.

MARTINEZ-CONTRERAS, J., 1992 Des moeurs des singes: Buffon et ses contemporains, pp 557–568 in BEAUNE, J.-C. et alii (q.v.).

MASTERS, R. D. and KELLY, C. (editors), 1992 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: discourse on the origins of inequality (second discourse); polemics; and, political economy, in The collected writings of Rousseau. Volume 3. Hanover & London: University Press of New England. Pp xxviii, [2], 212, [2].

MAYR, E., 1976 Evolution and the diversity of life: selected essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pp xii, 721.

MELVILLE, R. V. and SMITH, J. D. D. (editors), 1987 Offi cial lists and indexes of names and works in zoology. London : International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature. Pp [4], 366.

MONTAGU, M. F. A., 1943 Edward Tyson, M.D., F.R.S. 1650–1708 and the rise of human and comparative anatomy in England. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 20: xxix, 488.

MOORE, W., 2005 The knife man. London: Bantam Press. Pp xiii, 482.

MORAN III, F., 1993 Between primates and primitives: natural man as the missing link in Rousseau’s Second discourse. Journal of the history of ideas 54: 37 –58.

MYRONE, M., 2002 George Stubbs. London: Tate Publishing. Pp 80.

OPPÉ, A.P., 1950 English drawings, Stuart and Georgian periods, in the collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle. London: Phaidon Press. Pp 215.

[OWEN, R., ] 1853 Descriptive catalogue of the osteological series contained in the museum of The Royal College of Surgeons of England. London: Taylor & Francis. 2 volumes.

PALMER, J. F. (editor), 1837 The works of John Hunter, F.R.S. with notes. London: Longman, Rees. 4 volumes.

PAULSON, R., 1975 Emblem and expression: meaning in English art of the eighteenth century. London: Thames & Hudson. Pp 256.

PENNANT, T., 1771 Synopsis of quadrupeds. Chester: J. Monk. Pp xxv, 382.

PENNANT, T., 1781 History of quadrupeds. London: B. White. Pp xxiv, 566. [Second edition of Synopsis of quadrupeds.]

PENNANT, T., 1793 History of quadrupeds. London: B. & J. White. Pp 306. [Third edition of Synopsis of quadrupeds.]

PETTIGREW, T. J., 1838–1840 Medical portrait gallery : biographical memoirs of the most celebrated physicians, surgeons, etc. ... . London: Fisher, Son, & Co. 4 volumes.

QVIST, G. 1979 Some controversial aspects of John Hunter’s life and work. Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England 61: 478–483.

RAY, J., 1693 Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et serpentini generis. London: S. Smith & B. Walford. Pp [16], 336, [8].


REID, J. M., 1968 Traveller extraordinary: the life of James Bruce of Kinnaird. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. Pp 320.

REYNOLDS, J., 1777 A discourse delivered to the students of The Royal Academy, ... December 10, 1776. London: The Royal Academy. Pp [2], 44.

RITVO, H., 1997 The platypus and the mermaid and other fi gments of the classifying imagination. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press. Pp xvi, 288.

ROLFE, W. D. I., 1983 William Hunter (1718–--1783) on Irish ‘elk’ and Stubbs’s Moose. Archives of natural history 11: 263–290.

ROLFE, W. D. I., 1985 William and John Hunter: breaking the Great Chain of Being, pp 297–319 in BYNUM, W. F. and PORTER, R. (q.v.).

ROSENBERG, P. and TEMPERINI, R., 2000 Chardin. Munich, London, New York: Prestel. Pp 191.

SCHIEBINGER, L., 1994 Nature’s body: sexual politics and the making of modern science. London: Pandora. Pp viii, [2], 289.

SHAW, G., 1792 Museum Leverianum, containing select specimens from the museum of the late Sir Ashton Lever ... . Volume 1. London: J. Parkinson. Pp [10], 1–52, [4], 53–248.

SHERWIN, O., 1958 A man with a tail – Lord Monboddo. Journal of the history of medicine 13: 434–468.

SHORTER, E., 1985 The management of normal deliveries and the generation of William Hunter, pp 371–383 in BYNUM, W. F. and PORTER, R. (q.v.).

SLANEY, G., 1995 Hunter and the college, pp 1–4 in Papers presented at the Hunterian bicentenary. London: The Royal College of Surgeons of England. Pp [2], 37.

SLOAN, P. R.(editor), 1992 The Hunterian lectures in comparative anatomy May–June, 1837, Richard Owen. London: Natural History Museum Publications. Pp xvi, 340.

SLOAN, P. R., 2004 Clift, William. Oxford dictionary of national biography 12: 124–125. Oxford: University Press.

SLOAN, P., 1995 The gaze of natural history, pp 112–151 in FOX, C. et alii (q.v.) .

SMITH, J. D. D.(editor), 2001 Offi cial lists and indexes of names and works in zoology – supplement 1986–2000. London : International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature. Pp [4], 136.

SPENCER, F., 1995 Pithekos to Pithecanthropus: an abbreviated review of changing scientifi c views on the relationship of the anthropoid apes to Homo, pp 13–27 in CORBEY, R. and THEUNISSEN, B. (q.v.).

TAYLOR, B., 1955 Animal painting in England, from Barlow to Landseer. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Pp 71, 65.

TAYLOR, B., 1965 George Stubbs: ‘the lion and horse’ theme. Burlington magazine 107: 81–87.

TAYLOR, B., 1975 Stubbs. Second edition. London: Phaidon. Pp ii, 220.

TAYLOR, S., 1993 John Hunter and his painters. London: The Royal College of Surgeons of England. Pp iv, 8.

THIJSSEN, J. M. M. H., 1995 Reforging the Great Chain of Being: the medieval discussion of the human status of ‘pygmies’ and its infl uence on Edward Tyson, pp 43–50 in CORBEY, R. and THEUNISSEN, B. (q.v.).

THOMAS, K., 1983 Man and the natural world: changing attitudes in England 1500–1800. London: Allen Lane. Pp 426.

TOMPKINS, P.O., 1994 The monkey in art. New York: Scala Books. Pp 128.

TOPSELL, E., 1658 The history of four-footed beasts and serpents. London: G.Sawbridge, T. Williams and T. Johnson. Pp xii, 818, xviii, 889–1130.

TYSON, E., 1699 Orang-outang, sive Homo sylvestris or, the anatomy of a pygmie compared with that of a monkey, an ape, and a man. London: [The Royal Society]. Pp xii, 108, 58, 2. (Facsimile, 1966, with introduction by Ashley Montagu: London: Dawsons. Pp 12, xii, 108, 58, 2.)

VESALIUS, A., 1543 De humani corporis fabrica libri septem. Basle: J. Oporinus. Pp [12], 663, [36].

WARK, R. R., 1959 Sir Joshua Reynolds, discourses on art. San Marino, California: Huntington Library. Pp xxxvi, 321.

WARNER, M. and BLAKE, R., 2004 Stubbs and the horse. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Pp xviii, 229.

WATERHOUSE, E. K., 1962 Painting in Britain 1530 to 1790. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Pp xv, 276.


WHEATLEY, B.P., 1999 The sacred monkeys of Bali. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press. Pp ix, 189.

WHITE, C., 1799 An account of the regular gradation in man, and in different animals and vegetables; and from the former to the latter. London: C. Dilly. Pp xii, 146.

WILKINSON, L. 1982 ‘The other’ John Hunter, M.D., F.R.S. (1754–1809): his contributions to the medical literature, and to the introduction of animal experiments into infectious disease research. Notes and records of The Royal Society of London 36: 227–241.

WILLIAMSON, J., 1986 The oak king, the holly king, and the unicorn: the myths and symbolism of the unicorn tapestries. New York: Harper & Row. Pp xii, 260.

WOKLER, R., 1976 Tyson and Buffon on the orang-utan. Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century 155: 2301–2319.

WOKLER, R., 1978 Perfectible apes in decadent cultures: Rousseau’s anthropology revisited. Daedalus 107 (3): 107–134.

WOKLER, R., 1988 Apes and races in the Scottish enlightenment: Monboddo and Kames on the nature of man, pp 145–168 in JONES, P. (editor) Philosophy and science in the Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers. Pp vii, 230.

WOKLER, R., 1995 Anthropology and conjectural history in the enlightenment, pp 31–52 in FOX, C. et alii (q.v.).

WYNNE, C. (editor), 2003 Nature’s artist: plants and animals by Albrecht Dürer. Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel Verlag. Pp 96.

YERKES, R. M. and YERKES, A. W., 1929 The great apes: a study of anthropoid life. New Haven: Yale University Press. Pp xix, 652.

YOLTON, J. W., 1993 A Locke dictionary. Oxford & Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell. Pp [8], 348.

Received 13 November 2004. Accepted 6 April 2005.

Stubbs's "Drill and albino hamadryas baboon" in conjectural historical context

Documents

Transcript of Stubbs's "Drill and albino hamadryas baboon" in conjectural historical context