JEFFRIES WYMAN. 387 



Gorilla " is by Dr. Thomas S. Savage, to whom, along with 

 Dr. Wilson, " belongs the credit of the discovery : " the 

 Osteology of the same and the introductory history are by Dr. 

 Wyman. Indeed, nearly all since made known of the Go- 

 rilla's structure, and of the affinities soundly deduced there- 

 from, has come from our associate's subsequent papers, 

 founded on additional crania brought to hiin in 1849, by Dr. 

 George A. Perkins of Salem ; on a nearly entire male skele- 

 ton of unusual size, received in 1852 from the Rev. William 

 Walker, and now in Wyman's museum : and on a large col- 

 lection of skins and skeletons placed at his disposal in 1859, 

 by Du Chaillu, along with a young Gorilla in spirits, which 

 he dissected. It is in the account of this dissection that Pro- 

 fessor Wyman brings out the curious fact that the skull of 

 the young Gorilla and Chimpanzee bears closer resemblance 

 to the adult than to the infantile human cranium. 



In Professor Wyman 's library, bound up with a quarto copy 

 of the Memoir by Dr. Savage and himself, is a terse but com- 

 plete history of this subject, in his neat and clear handwrit- 

 ing, and with copies of the letters of Dr. Savage, Professor 

 Owen, Mr. Walker, and M. du Chaillu. 



In the introductory part of the Memoir, Professor Wyman 

 states that "the specific name. Gorilla, has been adopted, a 

 term used by Hanno in describing wild men found on the 

 coast of Africa, probably one of the species of the Orang." 

 The name Troglodytes Gorilla is no doubt to be cited as <»f 

 Savage and Wyman, and it was happily chosen by Professor 

 Wyman, after consultation with his friend, the late Dr. A. A. 

 Gould, for the reason just stated. But it is interesting to Bee, 

 in the correspondence before me, how strenuously each of the 

 joint authors deferred to the other the honor of nomenclature. 

 Dr. Savage from first to last insists, in repeated and emphatic 

 terms, that the scientific name shall be given by Dr. Wyman 

 as the scientific describer, and that he could not himself hon- 

 estly appropriate it. Professor Wyman in his MS. account. 

 after mentioning what his portion of the Memoir was. and 

 that " the determination of the differentia] characters on which 

 the establishment of the species rests was prepared by me." 



