Genre:

Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Richard L Garner North American Review

Subjects:

Zoology, Exploration, Sound, Electricity

    Reports that the 'oddest article in the magazines for the month' is by Garner, who 'has spent much time of late in studying monkey language, but [...] is not content with pursuing his favourite occupation in the zoological gardens of Europe and America. Nothing will content him but to go to monkey-land, where he hopes to sit at the feet of the anthropoid apes and learn the secret of their tongue. The scheme in itself is notable enough, but it is raised to the veriest limit of fantasy by the developments which it has undergone in the ingenious brain of the Professor. I should like to hear what Mr. Stanley or any other African traveller would say to the museum of scientific knickknacks by which the Professor proposes to rise superior to the difficulties of African travel'. These items include 'a large wire portable cage which is to serve him as a house', and 'a patent combination catapult gun-barrel which will silently discharge an arrow or a bolt the head of which will be loaded with fifteen drops of prussic acid'. His 'idea of tropical climate may be inferred from his proposing a canvas top and gummed cloth sides in order to keep the drenching deluge out from his sanctum in which he is going to store his phonograph, photographic instruments, telephone, and electric battery'. Predicts that although 'this ingenious professor of Civilisation' may 'make the journey and die in poverty [...] to succeed with all this apparatus, photographic cameras, the concentrated ammonia batteries, and the prussic acid darts, is beyond the reach of Professor Garner or any one else'.