The notion of hairy men, tailed men, and the like has no doubt arisen from the first introduction of the early writers and voyagers to various species of monkeys. Duris, one of the ancients, professed to know of the existence of an Indian tribe of shaggy, tailed men, while Ctesias, not to fall short in this pursuit of the marvellous, tells us of a certain Indian valley, or more probably a very uncertain one and exceedingly difficult to locate, where the inhabitants lived two hundred years, having in their youth white hair, which, with the ravages of time, gradually became quite black. In the “Periplus” of Hanno, about five hundred years before the Christian era, we have an unquestionable reference to the apes. “For three days,” says the Carthaginian admiral, “we passed along a burning coast, and at length reached a bay called the Southern Horn. In the bottom of this bay we found an island which was inhabited by wild men. The greater number of those we saw were females; they were covered with hair, and our interpreters called them Gorilloi.[16] We were unable to secure any of the men, as they fled to the mountains, and defended themselves with stones. As to the women we caught three of them, but they so bit and scratched us that we found it impossible to bring them along: we therefore killed and flayed them, and carried their hides to Carthage.” Rather a cool proceeding this, granting either that they were really human or that the Carthaginians regarded them as such. We should at all events so regard it nowadays if, for instance, the crew of a whaler flayed some Eskimo ladies and brought their hides to Dundee. Burton and other early English writers thoroughly believe in the existence of tailed men, and it has long been an article of belief that divers men even in this realm of England were born with tails. The Devonshire men stoutly contended that their Cornish neighbors were thus distinguished. According to Polydore Vergil, some at least of the men of Kent shared this peculiarity, and he very definitely asserts that it was a Divine judgment upon them for insulting one of His servants, Thomas à Becket. He tells us that when that prelate fell into disgrace with his sovereign, many people treated him with but little respect, and in Rochester he met with such contempt that amongst other marks of contumely the tail of the horse on which he was riding was cut off. By this profane inhospitality they reaped deserved reproach, for all the offspring of the men who did or connived at this thing were born with tails like horses. This mark of infamy we are told only disappeared with the gradual extinction of those whose forefathers had incurred this notorious and shameful penalty. In the “Loyal Scot” of Andrew Marvel we find the line, “For Becket’s sake, Kent always shall have tails.” As a line or two before this he has written “Deliver us from a Bishop’s wrath,” it is sufficiently evident that the passage alludes to the legend referred to.