whom the interpreters called " Gorillas." But,
pursuing them, we were not able to take the men; they
all escaped, being able to climb the precipices, and
defended themselves with pieces of rock. But three
women (females), who bit and scratched those who
led them, were not willing to follow. However,
having killed them, we flayed them, and conveyed
the skins to Carthage; for we did not sail any
further, as provisions began to fail.

In 1847, Professor Owen received a letter
from Dr. Savage, a church missionary at Gaboon,
a richly-wooded tract in the western part of
Africa, enclosing sketches of the cranium of an
ape, which he described as much larger than the
chimpanzee, ferocious in its habits, and dreaded
by the negro natives more than they dread the
lion or any other wild beast of the forest. Since
that period, the entire skeleton, and also the
carcase, preserved in spirits (hideous spectacle
to unscientific eyes), have come to the hands of
the savans of Europe, among whom they have
proved bones of contention: some assigning the
new species a rank above, some below, the
chimpanzee. When we shall have drawn our ugly
friend's likeness, we shall be better able to
indicate the points of difference and of resemblance
which have made the doctors differ.

The gorilla is of the average height of man,
five feet six inches; his brain case is low and
narrow, and, as the fore part of the skull is high,
and there is a very prominent ridge above the
eyes, the top of the head is perfectly flat, and
the brow, with its thick integument, forms a
"scowling pent-house over the eyes." Couple
with this a deep lead-coloured skin, much
wrinkled, a prominent jaw with the canine teeth
(in the males) of huge size, a receding chin; and
we have an exaggeration of the lowest and most
forbidding type of human physiognomy. The
neck is short; the head pokes forward. The
relative proportions of the body and limbs are
nearer those of man, yet they are of more
ungainly aspect than in any other of the brute
kind. Long, shapeless arms, thick and muscular,
with scarce any diminution of size deserving
the name of wrist (for at the smallest they are
fourteen inches round, while a strong man's
wrist is not above eight); a wide, thick hand
the palm long, and the fingers short, swollen and
gouty-looking; capacious chest; broad shoulders;
legs also thick and shapeless, destitute of calf,
and very muscular, yet short; a hand-like foot
with a thumb to it, " of huge dimensions and
portentous power of grasp." No wonder the
lion skulks before this monster, and even the
elephant is baffled by his malicious cunning
activity, and strength. The teeth indicate a
vegetable diet, but the repast is sometimes varied
with eggs, or a brood of young birds. The chief
reason of his enmity to the elephant appears
to be: not that it ever intentionally injures
him, but merely, that it shares his taste for
certain favourite fruits. And when, from his watch-
tower in the upper branches of a tree, he
perceives the elephant helping himself to these
delicacies, he steals along the bough, and, striking
its sensitive proboscis a violent blow with the
club with which he is almost always armed,
drives off the startled giant, trumpeting shrilly
with rage and pain.

Towards the negroes, the gorilla seems to
cherish an implacable hatred; he attacks them
quite unprovoked. If a party of blacks approach
unconsciously within range of a tree haunted
by one of these wood-demons—swinging rapidly
down to the lower branches, he clutches, with
his thumbed foot, at the nearest of them; his
green eyes flash with rage, his hair stands on
end, and the skin above the eyes, drawn rapidly
up and down, gives him a fiendish scowl.
Sometimes, during their excursions in quest of
ivory, in those gloomy forests, the natives will
first discover the proximity of a gorilla by the
sudden mysterious disappearance of one of their
companions. The brute, angling for him with
his horrible foot dropped from a tree while his
strong arms grasp it firmly, stretches down his
huge hind-hand, seizes the hapless wretch by
the throat, draws him up into the boughs, and,
as soon as his struggles have ceased, drops him
down, a strangled corpse.

A tree is the gorilla's sleeping-place by night,
his pleasant abode by day, and his castle of defence.
If surprised as he waddles along, leaning on his
club, instantly he betakes him to all-fours,
applying the back part of the bent knuckles
of his fore-hands to the ground, and makes his
way rapidly, with an oblique, swinging kind of
gallop, to the nearest tree. From that coigne
of vantage he awaits his foe, should the latter
be hardy, or foolhardy, enough, to pursue. No
full-grown gorilla has ever been taken alive. A
bold negro, the leader of an elephant-hunting
expedition, was offered a hundred dollars for a
live gorilla. "If you gave me the weight of
yonder hill in gold, I could not do it," he said.

Nevertheless, he has his good qualities—in a
domestic point of view; he is an amiable and
exemplary husband and father, watching over his
young family with affectionate solicitude, and
exerting in their defence his utmost strength
and ferocity. At the close of the rice harvest,
the period when the gorillas approach nearest
the abodes of man, a family group may sometimes
be observed, the parents sitting on a
branch, leaning against the trunk, as they munch
their fruit, while the young innocents sport
around, leaping and swinging from branch to
branch, with hoots or harsh cries of boisterous
mirth. The mothers show that devotion to
their young in times of danger, which is the most
universal of instincts. " A French natural history
collector" (we are quoting, as before, from
Professor Owen's memoir on the Gorilla, read to
the Royal Institution in February, 1859)
"accompanying a party of the Gaboon negroes into
the gorilla woods, surprised a female with two
young ones on a large boabdad" (the monkey
bread-fruit-tree) " which stood some distance
from the nearest clump. She descended the tree
with her youngest clinging to her neck, and
made off rapidly on all fours to the forest, and
escaped. The deserted young one, on seeing
the approach of the men, began to utter piercing