Caption
Copper plate illustration with contemporary hand colouring, possibly of an orang utan (Pongo pygmaeus), printed 1757. 'The satier, savage, wild man, pigmy, orang-autang, chimp-anzee & c. '. From 'Gleanings of Natural History' London: Royal College of Physicians, 1758 by George Edwards (1694-1773). This depiction by 'the father of ornithology' appears to be of an orangutan and shows an animal that was 'preserved in the British Museum in London'. Edwards set the specimen up in this pose to draw it 'before its parts too were too much dried or fallen in'. The picture is interesting for its early date and for the fact that it does not reference earlier images such as those of Gesner or (the more accurate) Tulpius (1641). Edward's figure here, was copied by Linnaeus's student Hoppius and named Pygmaeus edwardii. Edward's clearly did not know where the animal had come from and wrongly concluded he was drawing the same animal as Tyson's Chimpanzee (1698).
Availability
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