I 



u Dr. J. E. Gray on the Zoology of 



some travellers seem to think it necessary to infuse into their narra- 

 tives ; and it is certain that the same correction is necessary as re- 

 gards the plates which are given to illustrate the habits of the animal, 

 which have evidently been prepared from the notes of the traveller, 

 and not executed by an artist who has seen it in its native haunts. 

 But I cannot avoid stating that the following accounts of the young 

 Gorilla are not consistent with those that I have received from 

 persons who have kept more than one specimen alive for several 

 months in the Gaboon, or with the fact that one lived so long in 

 confinement as to be shipped for the Zoological Society, and these 

 specimens were described as anything but specially malignant or 

 ferocious : — 



" I think the adult Gorilla utterly untameable. In the course of 

 the narrative, the reader will find accounts of several young Gorillas 

 which my men captured alive, and which remained with me for short 

 periods till their death. In no case could any treatment of mine, 

 kind or harsh, subdue the little monsters from their first and lasting 

 ferocity and malignity " (p. 3.52). 



" But the Gorilla is entirely and constantly an enemy to man — 

 resenting its captivity, young as my specimens were — refusing all 

 food except the berries of their native woods, and attacking with 

 teeth and claws even me, who was in most constant attendance upon 

 them ; and finally dying without previous sickness, and with no other 

 ascertainable cause than the restless chafing of a spirit which could 

 not suffer captivity nor the presence of man" (p. 353). 



" A young one of between two and three years of age required 

 four stout men to hold it, and even then, in its struggles, bit one 

 severely." 



Having himself given these wonderful accounts of the habits of the 

 Gorilla, he observes (p. 347), " I am sorry to be the dispeller of 

 such agreeable delusions, — but the Gorilla does not lurk in trees by 

 the road-side, and drag up unsuspicious passers-by in its claws and 

 choke them to death in its vice-like paws ; it does not attack the 

 elephant and beat him to death with sticks ; it does not carry off 

 women from the native villages ; it does not even build itself a house 

 of leaves and twigs in the forest trees, and sit on the roof, as has 

 been confidently reported of it. It is not gregarious even ; and the 

 numerous stories of its attacking in great numbers have not a grain 

 of truth in them." 



A naturalist, in a note to Mr. White, observes, " I was surprised, 

 on mv return to Europe, to find the Gorilla all the go, and the matter 

 treated in this country as if the specimens brought by the American 

 [traveller] were the only ones Europeans had as yet cast eyes upon. 

 A very fine /w/Zy-developed specimen of Troglodytes gorilla was 

 shown at the Meeting of Naturalists at Vienua in 1856, and had 

 been there for some time. I was much struck with the vast differ- 

 ence in size between the huge Vienna specimen (being almost a head 

 taller than I ain, and I am G feet odd) and those exhibited at the 

 Royal Geographical Society's rooms. Ur. Norton Shaw thought that 

 I was going to stuff him when I told him that I had seen the Gorilla 



