John Hollingshead

“ The legal profession, who so often build or destroy other people’s nests, furnish a very good number of these particular apes. Starring barristers who neglect every case that does not lead to notoriety; who address juries from half-built nests only to collect more twigs, or to be lifted bodily into a warm woolsacky retreat, are certainly no unworthy members of this species. The web-spinning lawyer, who partly feeds the barrister—who looks out from a bower of bills of costs—is about as fine a specimen of the “nest-building ape” as any fancier of the tribe would like to examine. ”

“ We are constantly gathering the big and little twigs—constantly hedging ourselves in from all disasters—constantly making ourselves snug. There is small need to go to a distant howling wilderness for a few dry skins to prove that the nest-building faculty is cultivated by a large and industrious class. ”

“ This sympathetic yearning towards the nest-building ape is probably caused by one of those mysterious affinities which run through the whole animal world. It would be so easy to show that certain gorillas are nest-building men, or that certain men are nest-building apes, that we can hardly wonder at the interest taken in our newly-discovered cousins. ”