APPENDIX. 607 



The King of the Gorillas. 



I have paid much attention to the economy of monkeys for more 

 than half a century ; and I have here a young gorilla, which I dis- 

 sected after it had ceased to live. 



On reading the account of M. du Chaillu's late lecture in Glasgow, 

 I unhesitatingly pronounced it to be replete with the grossest errors 

 and exaggerations, so far as apes were concerned. 



In his book itself are found the most incompatible performances 

 of his royal gorilla. Sometimes it is a tottering cripple ; then, the 

 strongest beast of the forest ; occasionally, the determined foe of 

 man ; again, flying before his presence ; never in the trees (its proper 

 habitat), but always on the ground at one time, roaring in phrenzy 

 (apes never roar) at another time, punishing itself by beating its un- 

 offending breast so furiously, that the sound of the strokes might be 

 heard a mile off. 



But all this is a trifle, when compared w-th the unprovoked mur- 

 der of an unlucky negro by this ferocious monarch of the forest. 

 This Proteus ape felled the unfortunate man to the ground, by a 

 single blow from its unmerciful fore-leg ; and then frightfully lacerated 

 the abdomen, not with its teeth (the proper weapons), but with its 

 nails, which are flat, and as impotent as our own for such a butchery. 

 After this, with a rationality due only to man himself, the royal brute 

 considered the gun as an instrument of mischief, and he actually 

 smashed it to pieces with his fore-legs ! 



Thus, in these our latter times of wonder and credulity, M. du 

 Chaillu offers to the British public a new monster of an animal a 

 kind of modern Centaur, half-monkey, half-man ; dignified with the 

 high sounding name of " king of the gorillas ; " uniting in itself, with 

 wondrous deficiency of proper adaptation, the discordant ingredients 

 of strength and weaknesss, of courage and of cowardice, of slowness 

 and agility, to which may be added a considerable portion of human 

 intelligence. 



In fine, let M. du Chaillu, and the learned naturalists who en- 

 courage him in his strange career of lecturing, say and think what 



