482 A MYSTERIOUS QUADBUMANE. 



the Chimpanzee, and named him Troglodytes Gorilla, in allusion to 

 the celebrated narrative of the Carthaginian Hanno relative to the 

 pretended female Gorillas which that navigator professed to have seen 

 in an island of the Gulf of Guinea. Since that period the Gorilla has 

 been carefully studied by the eminent naturalist Professor Owen. 

 Messieurs Gautier and Franquet, French naval surgeons, collected 

 some important information upon the habits and physiology of this 

 great ape, and M. Franquet procured for the Paris Museum the 

 skeleton of an adult Gorilla. Other dead and preserved specimens 

 have since been imported into England and France, and the anatomy 

 of this African Troglodytes is accurately known. And, finally, M. 

 Du Chaillu, in the work already quoted, has supplied numerous 

 strange and interesting details, which, if at first discredited and 

 contested, are now very generally accepted as strictly accurate. 



The name of " Pongo," applied to the Gorilla by Battel and 

 BufFon, is clearly a modification or corruption of that of the tribe of 

 Mpongwess, who dwell on the banks of the Gaboon, not far from the 

 forests tenanted by this mysterious Quadrumane. 



The Mpongwess negroes call the Chimpanzee Enge-eko, and the 

 Gorilla Etige-ena ; whence the surname of "Gina," linked to the 

 zoological appellation of "Gorilla" Gm^itta-Gina. 



The Gorilla appears to be confined in the dense wooded regions 

 of Lower Guinea, where he shuns, and, if needs be, repels the 

 approach of man and that of the carnivorous animals, as well as of 

 all those who attempt to penetrate into his retreats. Fierce and 

 Savage is he in his every custom ; but it has never been satisfactorily 

 demonstrated that he acts on the aggressive. He is not the less an 

 object of extreme terror to his negro neighbours, on account of his 

 extraordinaiy strength ; and much more, perhaps, owing to the 

 fantastic legends that have grown up about his name. His stature 

 exceeds four, and sometimes attains, it is said, to upwards of six feet. 

 The most salient characteristics of his head are the great width 

 and elongation of the face, the development of the lower jaw, and the 

 smallness of the osseous framework, which surrounded by a very 



