“Those that employéd are the apes to catch,
The places where they haunt they use to watch;
Stockings and clothes about the ground they scatter,
Then instantly the apes begin to chatter,”
ll. 1-4.
Ape. 1658. Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries. University of Houston Digital Library. Web. August 22, 2013. https://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/p15195coll18/item/86.
An early modern depiction of the ape from Edward Topsell’s The History of four-footed beasts and serpents (London, 1658). Topsell describes how hunters catch apes by laying out shoes which the creatures find so heavy that they cannot run away; “so likewise for little bags made like breeches, wherewithal they are deceived and taken” (p. 4).
Rebekah King