36 APES, MONKEYS, AND LEMURS 



In 1856 the well-known African traveler, Du Chaillu, arrived at the Gabun, 

 preparatory to his expedition into the interior ; and two years later the British 

 Museum received from the Gabun an entire gorilla preserved in spirits, the skin of 

 which was soon afterwards mounted and exhibited to the public. 



Such is the history of the gradual acquisition of our knowledge of the largest of 

 the apes. On his return from the Gabun to America, Du Chaillu set to work to 

 publish an account of his travels and adventures ; and in 1861 the world was startled 

 by the appearance of his Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, which 

 gave a full and illustrated narrative of numerous personal encounters with gorillas. 

 Somewhat later, an Englishman, Mr. Winwood Reade, made an expedition to the 

 Gabun for the purpose of verifying these accounts ; the results of his journey being 

 given in a work entitled Savage Africa, of which the first edition appeared in 1863. 

 In this work it is asserted that neither Du Chaillu nor any other European had up 

 to that date ever seen a wild, living gorilla in its native haunts, though he possibly 

 did not refer to those driven to the shore in 1851 ; and his assertions are supported 

 by the members of the German I^oango Expedition of 1873-76. Be this as it may, 

 Du Chaillu' s accounts of gorilla-hunting have been so frequently quoted that we 

 need hardly dwell on them here. 



We now proceed to describe the gorilla, noticing especially the 

 ics more important characters in which it differs from the chimpanzee. 

 In the first place, it may, however, be observed that both these animals agree in the 

 deep black color of their skin, and the blackish hue of a large portion of the hair. 

 One of the most obvious distinctive features of the gorilla, as distinguished from 

 the chimpanzee, is that the males are very much larger than the females, while 

 their skulls have the beetling, bony ridges overhanging the sockets of the eyes, 

 which give to the living animals their peculiarly ferocious and forbidding aspect. 

 Then, again, the arms are relatively longer than in the chimpanzee, reaching, in 

 the upright position, some considerable distance below the knee, although never 

 below the middle of the lower leg or shin. In regard to our figure of the skeleton 

 of the gorilla, given on p. 17, it should, however, be observed that it is taken from 

 one mounted in a somewhat slouching position, so that the hands reach lower 

 down than would have been the case had it been set perfectly upright. Another 

 point in which the gorilla differs from the chimpanzee, and thereby departs still 

 further from the human type, is the greater length of the median bony union of 

 the two branches of the lower jaw. Moreover, the "wisdom-tooth," or last molar, 

 in the upper jaw, is larger than either of the two molars in front of it ; this being 

 another departure from the chimpanzee and man. 



Such are some of the leading structural features by which the gorilla is 

 distinguished from the chimpanzee, and they are those on which zoologists chiefly 

 rely in referring these animals to different genera. We shall see, however, im- 

 mediately that there are many other points of difference, but before noticing these 

 we must mention certain characteristics by which the chimpanzee and gorilla are 

 collectively distinguished from the lower Man-like Apes, and thereby agree with 

 man. One of these is that the total number of joints in the backbone, or vertebrae, 

 lying between the solid mass called the sacrum and the neck is seventeen, or the 



