268 FIRST LESSONS IN ZOOLOGY. 



height. Both the chimpanzee and gorilla have fourteen 

 pairs of ribs. The chimpanzee lives on fruit, is an active 

 climber, and nests in trees, changing its rude quarters ac- 

 cording to circumstances. 



The gorilla (Fig. 266), like the chimpanzee, goes in 

 bands, but the company is smaller, and led by a single 

 adult male. It makes similar nests, which, however, in 

 the case of both apes, afford no shelter, and are only occu- 

 pied at night. The gorilla sometimes reaches the height 

 of about If metres (5| feet) and weighs about 200 pounds. 

 Its ordinary attitude is like that of the chimpanzee ; there 

 is a web between the first joints of all the fingers and 

 three of the toes, and both hands and feet are broader, 

 while the body is much more robust than in the other apes, 

 being very broad across the shoulders. The span of the 

 arms is to the height as three to two, or a little over eight 

 feet. The skull is thick, and the strength and ferocity of 

 the creature are evinced by the thick supraorbital ridges 

 and the high sagittal and lambdoidal crests on the top of 

 the skull ; the face is wide and long, the nose broad and 

 flat, the lips and chin prominent. The gorilla walks like 

 the chimpanzee, though it stoops less. It is very ferocious 

 and bold, never running when approached or tracked by 

 man. It lives on a range of mountains in the i^erior of 

 Guinea, its habitat, so far as known, extending from a 

 little north of the Gaboon River to the Congo. 



" Thus, to recapitulate, while the gibbons are most remote 

 from man, the orangs approach him nearest in the number 

 of the ribs, the form of the cerebral hemispheres, and other 

 less obvious characters ; the chimpanzee is nearest related 

 to him in the form of the skull, the teeth, and the propor- 

 tions of the arms, while the gorilla resembles him more in 

 the proportions of the leg to the body, of the foot to the 

 hand, in the size of the heel, the curvature of the spine, the 

 form of the pelvis, and the absolute capacity of the skull. " 

 (Huxley. ) Anatomists have differed and do differ as to 

 whether the chimpanzee or the gorilla is nearest to man. 



