Introduction 



The gorilla is distributed (apparently with intervening 

 gaps) between the elevated Virunga volcano region on the 

 east (almost on the frontiers of Western Uganda), and the 

 coast region of the Gaboon and the Cameroons on the west. 

 In the Cameroons, gorillas are found certainly as far north 

 as the middle Sanagd River, and in a southerly direction 

 their range extends into the Luango coast country, north of 

 the Lower Congo. 



The chimpanzis in several species or sub-species are found 

 in the southern part of the Bahr-al-ghazal province of the 

 Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and thence southward (through Unyoro 

 and Western Uganda) along the western side of Tanganyika 

 to the district of Marungu and possibly the vicinity of Lake 

 Mweru in S. lat. 8*^. Certainly the gorilla and apparently 

 the chimpanzi, are not found west or south of the main stream 

 of the Congo ; the chimpanzi, however, is fairly abundant 

 through the northern forested Congo basin to the Luango coast 

 and the Cameroons. Chimpanzis are found in the eastern 

 and perhaps the western parts of Southern Nigeria. They 

 have never been reported from Dahome, and their existence 

 in the Gold Coast is not established. But they are still 

 found in the Ivory Coast forests, in Liberia, Sierra Leone, 

 and much of Senegambia up to the Gambia River. They 

 are larger and superficially more gorilla-like in the eastern 

 half of their range than they are in West Africa. 



It would almost seem at one time as though their range in 

 the Eastern Sudan brought them within the cognizance of 

 the ancient Egyptians, for chimpanzis were certainly known 

 to the Greeks in the Greek colonies of Mediterranean Egypt, 

 whither they may have been brought as curiosities from the 

 Sudan. In the Tanagra collection of the British Museum 



XXV i 



