D6 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
tcheliensts) from Northern China. He is covered with a dense 
coat of fur, and so well fitted to withstand winter weather that 
he lives outside all the year, even when the cold is 10° below 
zero, and requires to be kept cool rather than warm. Evidently 
his temper is as warm as his body, for a placard entreats the 
inquisitive visitor not to irritate him. 
Strange to say, the Monkey House does not contain the an- 
thropoid apes. They live in a small wooden building in the 
Middle Garden, adjoining the Small Cats’ House and the Kan- 
garoo Sheds; and having been told the collection contained that 
rarity of rarities, a live gorilla, we hastened thither with all speed, 
lest the creature should perversely die before we had made good 
an opportunity to gaze upon its sable countenance. ‘The writer 
confesses to a feeling of the same kind of excitement that every 
hunter feels when, after a long and tedious quest, he at last—and 
for the first time in his life—beholds the object of his pursuit. 
It was sheer good fortune, and nothing else, that took him to 
London during the lifetime of that particular gorilla, which is 
said to be the third specimen ever brought alive to Europe. 
Morose and sullen as captive gorillas ever are, this specimen, 
a half-grown female, crouched on the floor at the rear of her cage, 
so completely enveloped in a heavy gray blanket that not even a 
finger-tip was visible. | Upon speaking to her, she refused to no- 
tice anyone without a formal introduction. At last the keeper 
of the Ape House, Mr. George Mansbridge, procured an apple, 
approached the bars, and said, ‘‘ Here, old lady! Come and get 
this apple. Come on, now!’’ Inamoment the blanket began 
to heave, presently it fell aside, and 7Z7oglodytes gorilla stood 
revealed. 
How black she was! She looked as if she had spent her life 
in cleaning chimneys. Slowly and grudgingly she waddled down 
to the front of the cage, unsteadily, like a heavy man traversing 
the aisle of a moving street-car. Very deliberately she received 
the apple sections that were offered her by Mr. Mansbridge, and 
ate them with the air of one who confers a favor. Her protrud- 
ing stomach suggested inactivity, enlargement of the spleen, in- 
digestion and other ills to which inactive flesh is the natural heir. 
Apes are just like human beings; those who will not take ex- 
ercise are the first to die. 
In the Ape House there were orang-utans and chimpanzees 
