THE GORILLAS. l8l 



Safyrus adrotes, Meyer, Arch. f. Naturg., p. 182 (1856). 

 Simta gonila, Schl., Mus. Pays-Bas, vii., p. 8 (1876). 

 Gorilla mayema, Alix et Boiiv. C. R., Ixxxv., p. 58 (1878). 

 {Plate XL.) 

 Characters. — The face of this massive and most ponderous 

 of all the Apes is naked and black, very wide and elongated. 

 The large head has a ridge of hair along the central crest, and 

 its lower jaw is very wide and far extended backward. The 

 nose is long and high, and broad and flat at its extremity, 

 and is also grooved longitudinally. The muzzle is broad, the 

 mouth wide ; the upper lip short, and the lower mobile and 

 protrudable. The eyes are large; the ears naked and black, 

 with the posterior upper angle pointed, and the lower margin 

 produced into a rudimentary pendulous lobule. 



The cranial region is comparatively small. The supra-orbital 

 ridges, in which the eye-brows are set, form, from their promi- 

 nence, a marked feature of the face. They overhang the eyes, 

 causing them to appear very much sunk in the skull. The 

 neck is short, the chest and shoulders wide, thickly haired and 

 suggestive of great strength. 



The arms are much longer than the fore-arms, and the feet, 

 which have no in-step, exceed the hands in length, and are 

 much broader than in other genera of the Simiidce. The heel, 

 which in the Orangs is small, is in the Gorilla strongly de- 

 veloped, on which account it can easily stand erect. Its 

 opposable great-toe is large and flattened, and has a wide nail \ 

 while the lower joints of the second, third, and fourth toes^ 

 which are also short and thick— are united by a web. The 

 arms, on which the hair converges on both sides of the joint 

 towards the elbow, are so long as to reach down to the middle 



