Liberia *- 



when caught young can be trained to such services as bringing 

 firewood, scaring birds, and above all, minding children, who 

 shall say what further developments might not come in the 

 course of centuries ? 



The chimpanzees of Liberia, judging from such skulls as 

 1 have seen brought from the far interior, and from information 

 collected by Buttikofer and others, do not attain a very large 

 size ; they are not yet known to become such big animals as 

 Simla vellerosus. An old male measured by Buttikofer was about 

 3 feet 3 inches from the brow-ridges, over the head and along 

 the back to the end of the rump. The Hon. Walter Rothschild 

 in his paper on Anthropoid Apes, 1 following Professor Matschie, 

 distinguishes the Liberian chimpanzees as belonging mainly to 

 the species Simla pygm<eus, but he differentiates them from 

 other varieties of this small chimpanzee as *$'. pygm<eiis fuscus 

 (the chimpanzee of Southern Liberia, the Ivory Coast, and the 

 Gold Coast) and S. pygmxus leucoprymnus of Western Liberia 

 and Sierra Leone. The last-named receives its sub-specific title 

 from the distinct patch or wisp of white hair growing on the 

 rump, the wisp of hair being sometimes so long as to deceive 

 people into thinking that this form of chimpanzee has a small, 

 erect tail, which of course is not the case. 



S. pygm<eus fuscus is described as having hair of a reddish 

 tinge. I have not noticed this colour in the two or three 

 chimpanzees which I have seen between 1882 and 1904 at Cape 

 Palmas, chimpanzees which had been brought down from the 

 Cavalla River. Their hair was perfectly black. According to 

 Mr. Rothschild, Professor Matschie the German zoologist 

 believes that he has distinguished two other sub-species or 

 varieties of chimpanzee from Liberia. All the forms I have seen 

 myself on the coast of this country seem to have been of the 



, Zoological Society, April, 1905. 

 676 



