GORILLA ALMOST MAN? 242 
way. All the gorilla beds I saw were on the ground. 
They consisted of a pile of leaves, about what the 
long arms of a gorilla could pull together without 
moving. I saw no signs of their occupying these 
hastily constructed sleeping places more than once. 
The gorilla makes no abode, has no clothes, uses 
no tools, unless grasping a stick may indicate the 
beginnings of such an idea. It is still before the 
dawn of intelligence with him. Yet scientists tell 
me that he has the palate and muscles that enable 
man to talk. In spite of Mr. Garner the gorilla can- 
not talk, but no one knows how near to it he is. Prob- 
ably he is a very long way from speech. Of course, 
a parrot can be taught to talk, but a parrot has no 
brains to speak of, so that his talking is of no signi- 
ficance. But recent studies of the brain of John 
Daniel seem to place his brain about on a par with 
that of a two-year-old child. Now a two-year-old 
child can both talk and think. If the gorilla with 
his child’s brain could learn to use his voice even like 
a parrot, we should have come very near to having 
a contemporaneous “missing link.” This, of course, 
is very unlikely to happen and it is not necessary, for 
science can make deductions from the gorilla’s brain, 
muscle, habits, etc., which will enable us to under- 
stand more of the gorilla’s significance for evolution 
without such a spectacular event as his acquiring 
speech. I mention such a thing merely as an un- 
scientific way of trying to dramatize the importance 
of the study of the gorilla. 
Of course it does not follow that because the 
