Note 677 — Chapter XIV · THE ORDER PRIMATES

“‘Mandrill’ seems to signify a ‘man-like Ape,’ the word ‘Drill’ or ‘Dril’ having been anciently employed in England to denote an Ape or Baboon. Thus in the fifth edition of Blount’s ‘Glossographia, or a dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined English tongue ... very useful for all such as desire to understand what they read,’ published in 1681, I find ‘Dril, a stonecutter’s tool wherewith he bores little holes in marble, etc. Also a large overgrown Ape and Baboon, so called.’ ‘Drill’ is used in the same sense in Charlton’s Onomasticon Zoicon, 1668. The singular etymology of the word given by Buffon seems hardly a probable one.”—Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature, p. 10, 1863.