GORILLA. 37 



Africa, which gave a full and illustrated narrative of numerous personal encounters 

 with gorillas. Somewhat later, an Englishman, Mr. Winwood Eeade, made an 

 expedition to the Gabun for the purpose of verifying these accounts ; the results 

 of his journey being given in a work entitled Savage Africa, of which the first 

 edition appeared in 1863. In this work it is asserted that neither Du Chaillu nor 

 any other European had up to that date ever seen a wild, livino- gorilla in its 

 native haunts, though he possibly did not refer to those driven to the shore in 

 1851 ; and his assertions are supported by the members of the German Loango 

 Expedition of 1873-76. Be this as it may, Du Chaillu's accounts of gorilla-hunting 

 have been so frequently quoted that we need hardly dwell on them hei-e. 



, . ,. We now proceed to describe the gorilla, noticing especially the 



cnaractenstics. . . , . o i j 



more important characters in which it difiers from the chimpanzee. 



In the first place, it may, however, be observed that both these animals agree in the 



deep black colour of their skin, and the blacki.sh hue of a large portion of the hair. 



One of the most obvious distinctive features of the gorilla, as distinguished from 



the cliimpanzee, is that the males are very much larger than the females, while 



their skulls have the beetling, ])ony ridges overhanging the sockets of the ej-cs, 



whicli give to the living animals their peculiarly ferocious and forbidding aspect. 



Then, again, the arms are relatively longer than in the chimpanzee, reaching, in 



the upright position, some considerable distance below the knee, although never 



below the middle of the lower leg or shin. In regard to our figure of the skeleton 



of the gorilla, given on p. 17, it should, however, be observed that it is taken from 



one mounted in a somewhat slouching position, so that the hands reach lower 



down than would have been the case had it been set perfectly upright. Another 



point in which the gorilla difiers from the chimpanzee, and thereby departs still 



further from the human tj^e, is the greater length of the median bony union of 



the two branches of the lower jaw. Moreover, the " wisdom-tooth," or last molar, 



in the upper jaw, is larger than either of the two molars in front of it; this being 



another departure from the chimpanzee and man. 



Such are some of the leading structural features by which the gorilla is 



distinguished from the chimpanzee, and they are those on which zoologists chiefly 



rely in referring these animals to ditferent genera. We shall see, however, 



immediately that there are many other points of difference, but before noticing 



these we must mention certain characteristics by which the chimpanzee and 



gorilla are collectively distinguished from the lower Man-like Apes, and thereby 



agree with man. One of these is that the total number of joints in the backbone, 



or vertebrae, lying between the solid mass called the sacrum and the neck is 



seventeen, or the same as in man. It is true, indeed, that whereas in man only 



twelve of these vertebras carry ribs, in the gorilla and chimpanzee thirteen are so 



provided ; but this is a matter of minor import, which is entirely overbalanced 



by the numerical identity of the vertebrae. The other point is the absence of the 



central bone in the wrist; so that whereas in man, the cliimpanzee, and the 



gorilla the total number of separate wrist-bones is but eight, in all the other 



Primates it is nine. This is a very important characteristic in connecting these 



two apes with man. 



