JK GILLON 
 Lord Monboddo was one of the most respected and eminent Judges at Edinburgh's Court of Session during the 18th century, but he was also something of an oddball. He had a passionate attachment to the ways of the Ancient Greeks and a contempt for anything he considered to be modern. As a result he lived very simply. If the Ancient Greeks didn't use it, neither did he. He traveled only on horseback, for example, as coaches and sedan-chairs were new inventions.
He refused to sit on the Bench with his fellow judges but sat underneath with the court clerks. This was due to a decision, which went against him when he was the claimant in a case involving the value of a horse.
In 1773, he published a notorious book Of the Origin and Progress of Language. It included the theories that man was derived from animals, that orang-utangs were related to humans and capable of speech, and that in the Bay of Bengal there was a nation of human creatures with tails. These ideas "afforded endless matter for jest by the wags of the day", but today are seen to be related to the theory of evolution. Slightly more eccentric was his belief that babies are born with tails and that midwives cut them off at birth.
In 1785, when he was 71, Lord Monboddo was visiting the King's Court in London when part of the ceiling of the courtroom started to collapse. There was a great rush from the building, until the danger was past and order restored. Lord Monboddo, who was deaf and shortsighted, was the only person who did not move from his seat. When asked why, he explained that he thought it was "an annual ceremony, with which, as an alien, he had nothing to do".
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