90 



down his huge hind-hand, seized the passing negro by the neck, 

 with vice-like grip, has drawn him up to higher branches, and 

 dropped him when his struggles had ceased. 



The strength of the gorilla is such as to make him a match for 

 a lion, whose tusks his own almost rival. Over the leopard, 

 invading the lower branches of the gorilla's dwelling tree, he will 

 gain an easier victory ; and the huge canines, with which only the 

 male gorilla is furnished, doubtless have been assigned to him for 

 defending his mate and offspring. 



The skeleton of the old male gorilla obtained for the British 

 Museum in 1857, shews an extensive fracture, badly united, of the 

 left arm-bone, which has been shortened, and gives evidence of long 

 suffering from abscess and partial exfoliation of bone. The upper 

 canines have been wrenched out or shed, some time before death, 

 for their sockets have become absorbed. 



The redeeming quality in this fragmentary history of the gorilla 

 is the male's care of his family, and the female's devotion to her 



6- 



young 



It is reported that a French natural-history collector, accom- 

 panying a party of the Gaboon negroes into the gorilla woods, 

 surprised a female with two young ones on a large boabdad 

 (Adansonia), which stood some distance from the nearest clump. 

 She descended the tree, with the 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 cries : the mother, having disposed of her infant 

 in safety, returned to rescue the older offspring, but before she 

 could descend with it her retreat was cut off. Seeing one of the 

 negroes level his musket at her, she, clasping her young with one 

 arm, waved the other, as if deprecating the shot; the ball passed 

 through her heart, and she fell with her young one clinging to her. 

 It was a male, and survived the voyage to Havre, where it died on 

 arriving. I have examined the skeleton of this young gorilla in 

 the museum of natural history at Caen, and am indebted to Professor 

 Deslongchamps, Dean of the Faculty of Sciences in that town, for 

 drawings of this rare specimen. 



There might be more difficulty in obtaining a young gorilla for 

 exhibition than a young chimpanzee. But as no full-grown chim- 

 panzee has ever been captured, we cannot expect the larger and 

 much more powerful adult gorilla to be ever taken alive. 



A bold negro, the leader of an elephant-hunting expedition, 



