34 APES, MONKEYS, AND LEMURS 



THE GOKILLA 

 Genus Gorilla 



Under the heading of the Chimpanzee we have already seen how, as far back as 

 1590, the English sailor Battel heard of the existence of a gigantic ape living in the 

 forests of Guinea, and known to the natives as the Pongo ; this ape being also known 

 under the names of Jina, N'Jma, O r Indjina, or N'Guyala, while by Europeans it is 

 universally termed the Gorilla. The naturalist Buffon appears to have given cre- 

 dence to Battel's Pongo (N'Pungu, or M'Pungu, as it is variously spelled); but his 

 account was summarily rejected by the great Cuvier as a mere traveler's tale. Still, 

 however, vague rumors of the existence on the West Coast of Africa of an ape of 

 larger size and fiercer habits than the chimpanzee from time to time reached Eu- 

 rope ; and in 1819 Bowdich, in his account of the " Mission from Cape Coast Castle 

 to Ashanti," definitely stated that among the many curious apes found in the 

 Gabun district the ingenu (or gorilla) was by far the largest and strongest. It was 

 not, however, till the year 1847 that any precise evidence of the existence of this 

 mysterious ape reached Europe. In that year, however, Dr. Savage, an English 

 missionary stationed at the Gabun, wrote to the veteran comparative anatomist, Sir 

 Richard Owen, enclosing drawings of the skull of an ape from that district, which 

 was described as being much larger than the chimpanzee, and feared by the negroes 

 more than they dread the lion, or any other wild beast of the forest. These 

 sketches clearly showed the bold bony crests over the eye sockets, which mark the 

 skull of the gorilla as distinct from that of the chimpanzee. "At a later date in the 

 same year," writes Sir Richard Owen, "were transmitted to rne from Bristol two 

 skulls of the same large species of chimpanzee as that notified in Dr. Savage's let- 

 ter ; they were obtained from the sam'e locality in Africa, and brought clearly to 

 light evidence of the existence in Africa of a second larger and more powerful ape. ' ' 

 In the following year these specimens were described by the English anatomist un- 

 der the name of Troglodytes savagei. It appears, however, that about the same 

 time that Dr. Savage forwarded the sketches to Sir Richard Owen, he also sent a 

 skull of the unknown ape, together with a description of the animal itself, by the 

 hand of a fellow-missionary named Wilson, to Boston in the United States. And in 

 an American scientific journal for the year 1847, the new ape was described, and 

 named Troglodytes gorilla. Thus matters stood till the year 1851, when a Captain 

 Harris presented to the Royal College of Surgeons the first skeleton of a gorilla that 

 had ever been brought to England ; while in the same year another skeleton was 

 sent to Philadelphia by Mr. Ford. This at once made a great advance in our 

 knowledge of the creature; and in 1852 a French naturalist came to the conclusion 

 that the gorilla ought not to be included in the same genus as the chimpanzee ; and 

 he accordingly proposed for it the name of Gorilla gena. By the rules of nomencla- 

 ture adopted among zoologists, he had, however, no right to supersede the specific 

 name proposed by Sir Richard Owen ; and the gorilla is accordingly now known 

 scientifically as Gorilla savagei. 



