242 ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



kept four months, and many means were used to tame it ; 

 but it was incorrigible, so that it bit me an hour before it 

 died." 



Mr. Ford discredits the house-building and elephant- 

 driving stories, and says that no well-informed natives 

 believe them. They are tales told to children. 



I might quote other testimony to a similar effect, but, as 

 it appears to me, less carefully weighed and sifted, from the 

 letters of MM. Franquet and Gautier Laboullay, appended 

 to the memoir of M. I. G. St. Hilaire, which I have already 

 cited. 



Bearing in mind what is known regarding the Orang 

 and the Gibbon, the statements of Dr. Savage and Mr. Ford 

 do not appear to me to be justly open to criticism on d priori 

 grounds. The Gibbons, as we have seen, readily assume 

 the erect posture, but the Gorilla is far better fitted by its 

 organization for that attitude than are the Gibbons : if the 

 laryngeal pouches of the Gibbons, as is very likely, are im- 

 portant in giving volume to a voice which can be heard for 

 half a league, the Gorilla, which has similar sacs, more largely 

 developed, and whose bulk is fivefold that of a Gibbon, may 

 well be audible for twice that distance. If the Orang fights 

 with its hands, the Gibbons and Chimpanzees with their 

 teeth, the Gorilla may, probably enough, do either or both ; 

 nor is there anything to be said against either Chimpanzee 

 or Gorilla building a nest, when it is proved that the Orang- 

 utan habitually performs that feat. 



With all this evidence, now ten to fifteen years old, before 

 the world, it is not a little surprising that the assertions 

 of a recent traveller, who, so far as the Gorilla is concerned, 

 really does very little more than repeat, on his own authority, 

 the statements of Savage and of Ford, should have met with 

 so much and such bitter opposition. If subtraction be made 

 of what was known before, the sum and substance of what 

 M. Du Chaillu has affirmed as a matter of his own observa- 

 tion respecting the Gorilla, is, that, in advancing to the 

 attack, the great brute beats his chest with his fists. I 

 confess I see nothing very improbable, or very much worth 

 disputing about, in this statement. 



With respect to the other man-like Apes of Africa, 

 M. Du Chaillu tells us absolutely nothing, of his own know- 

 ledge, regarding the common Chimpanzee ; but he informs 

 us of a bald-headed species or variety, the nschiego mbouve, 

 which builds itself a shelter, and of another rare kind with a 



