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XVIII. Osteological Conlributions to the Natural History of the Chimpanzees (Troglodytes, 

 Geoffroy), including the description of the Skull of a large species (Troglodytes 

 Gorilla, Savage) discovered by Thomas S. Savage, M.D., in the Gaboon country, 

 West Africa. By Prof. Owen, F.R.S., F.Z.S. Sfc. 



Head February 22, 1848. 



§ 1. Introduction. 



The principal additions, since the time of Cuvier, to the Natural History of the great 

 Apes that make the nearest approach to Man, are to be found, I believe, in previous 

 volumes of the ' Transactions of the Zoological Society of London,' and are chiefly due 

 to the important aids which the Society has been able to render by its collections and 

 its illustrated publications to those Members who are more immediately engaged in the 

 advancement of its scientific objects. 



But of these additions none exceed in interest and importance that to which the pre- 

 sent memoir relates, and for the chief subject of which the obligations of naturalists are 

 due to Dr. Thomas Savage, Corr. Member of the Boston Society of Natural History, U.S., 

 and to Mr. Samuel Stutchbury, F.L.S. Before, however, commencing the account of 

 the very remarkable crania which Mr. Stutchbury has obligingly transmitted for exhi- 

 bition at the Meeting of the Society this evening, and liberally confided to me for 

 description, and which establish the fact of the existence in the western parts of tropical 

 Africa of a second and very large and formidable species of Chimpanzee, a few words 

 may be premised on the principal steps by which the natural history of the Anthropoid 

 Quadrumana has been advanced since the publication of the last edition of the ' Regne 

 Animal*.' 



In the first volume of this classical work Cuvier groups the Chimpanzee and the 

 Orang, recognising only a single species of each, in the same subgeneric section of the 

 Linnsean genus Simia, and he places the Orang {Pithecus, Geoffroy) next to Man, cha- 

 racterizing it as " of all animals that which most resembles Man in the form of the head, 

 the expanse of the forehead (la grandeur de son front)," and other particulars, which 

 have since, however, been proved to be peculiarities of the young individuals of the 

 species in question. Cuvier briefly alludes, at the end of his description, to the great 

 Ape of Borneo, called ' Pongo,' as known only by the skeleton, but which, " maugre 

 the great prominence of its muzzle, the smallness of its cranium and the height of the 

 branches of the lower jaw, might be deemed an adult, if not of the Orang-outang, at 



* 8vo, Paris, vol. i. 1829. 

 VOL. III. PART VI. 3 G 



