THE GORILLA AND OTHER APES. 303 



show watchfulness over their food, and as much ill-temper 

 when deprived of it, and as much anxiety to recover it, as 

 this chimpanzee did. A hundred cases in point might 

 readily be cited.* 



Perhaps the soundest opinion respecting the relative 

 position of the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-outang with 

 reference to man, is that which places the gorilla nearest to 

 the lower tribes of man now inhabiting Africa, the chim- 

 panzee approximating, but not so closely, to higher African 

 tribes, and the orang-outang approximating, but still less 

 closely, to Asiatic tribes. It appears to me that, whatever 

 weight naturalists may attach to those details in which the 

 gorilla and the chimpanzee are more removed from man 

 than the orang, no one who takes a general view of these 

 three races of anthropoid apes can hesitate to regard the 

 gorilla as that which, on the whole, approaches nearest to 

 man ; but it is to a much lower race of man that the gorilla 

 approximates, so that the chimpanzee and the orang-outang 

 may fairly be regarded as higher in the scale of animal life. 



If we consider young specimens of the three animals, 

 which is, on the whole, the safest way of forming an opinion, 

 we are unmistakably led, in my judgment, to such a conclu- 

 sion. I have seen three or four young chimpanzees, two 

 young orangs, and the young gorilla lately exhibited at the 

 Aquarium (where he could be directly compared with the 

 chimpanzee), and I cannot hesitate to pronounce Pongo 



* I may mention one which occurred within my own experience. 

 A. mastiff of mine, some years ago, was eating from a plate full of broken 

 meat It was his custom to bury the large pieces when there was more 

 than he could get through. While he was burying a large piece, a cat 

 ran off with a small fragment The moment he returned to the plate he 

 missed this, and, seeing no one else near the plate, he, in his own way, 

 accused a little daughter of mine (some two or three years old) of the 

 theft Looking fiercely at her, he growled his suspicions, and would not 

 suffer her to escape from the corner where his plate stood until I dragged 

 him away by his chain. Nor did he for some time forget the wrong 

 which he supposed she had done him, but always growled when she 

 came near his house. 



