STORY OF THE GORILLA. 



The gorilla, an enormous ape from Western Africa, is the largest mem- 

 ber of the monkey family, but others have a much greater resemblance to 

 man and have many human characteristics wanting in the gorilla. Of the 

 man-like apes, the chimpanzee is the largest and most commonly known. 

 Next comes the orang-outan, which frequently attains a height of over five 

 feet. The gibbon is a small, active simian, and has the peculiarity of great 

 cleanliness; the mother washing her offspring's face several times daily in 

 spite of the struggles and screams of the young. Others are the marmoset, 

 lemurs, the spider-monkeys. 



A great deal of nonsense has been written about the impossibility of man 

 being descended from the chimpanzee, a gorilla, or an orang. No one, how- 

 ever, who knows what he is talking about, can ever suppose for a single 

 moment that such was the case. What zoologists do contend for is that, 

 supposing some kind of evolution to be true explanation of the origin of 

 animals, — and all the available evidence indicates that it is so, — man is so 

 intimately connected, so far as his bodily structure is concerned, with the 

 higher apes that, in this respect at least, he cannot but be considered to have 

 had a similar origin. And on this view both man and the man-like apes are 

 regarded as diverging branches descended from a common ancestor, — "the 



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