3 o6 PLEASANT WAYS IN SCIENCE. 



hostile to himself, but successful in securing the fruits which 

 the gorilla loves, for he shows a similar hatred to the 

 elephant, which also seeks these fruits. We are told that 

 when the gorilla "sees the elephant busy with his trunk 

 among the twigs, he instantly regards this as an infraction of 

 the laws of property, and, dropping silently down to the 

 bough, he suddenly brings his club smartly down on the 

 sensitive finger of the elephant's proboscis, and drives off 

 the alarmed animal trumpeting shrilly with rage and pain." 

 His enmity to man is more terribly manifested. " The 

 young athletic negroes in their ivory-haunts," says Gosse, 

 " well know the prowess of the gorilla. He does not, like 

 the lion, sullenly retreat on seeing them, but swings himself 

 rapidly down to the lower branches, courting the conflict, 

 and clutches the nearest of his enemies. The hideous 

 aspect of his visage (his green eyes flashing with rage) is 

 heightened by the thick and prominent brows being drawn 

 spasmodically up and down, with the hair erect, causing a 

 horrible and fiendish scowl. Weapons are torn from their 

 possessor's grasp, gun-barrels bent and crushed in by the 

 powerful hands and vice-like teeth of the enraged brute. 

 More horrid still, however, is the sudden and unexpected 

 fate which is often inflicted by him. Two negroes will be 

 walking through one of the woodland paths unsuspicious ol 

 evil, when in an instant one misses his companion, or turns 

 to see him drawn up in the air with a convulsed choking 

 cry, and in a few minutes dropped to the ground, a strangled 

 corpse. The terrified survivor gazes up, and meets the grin 

 and glare of the fiendish giant, who, watching his oppor- 

 tunity, had suddenly put down his immense hind hand, 

 caught the wretch by the neck with resistless power, and 

 dropped him only when he ceased to struggle." 



The chimpanzee inhabits the region from Sierra Leone 

 to the southern confines of Angola, possibly as far as Cape 

 Negro, so that his domain includes within it that of the 

 gorilla. He attains almost the same height as the gorilla 

 when full grown, but is far less powerfully built In fact, in 



