2226 The Zoologist— July, 1870. 



about 4° S. and 30° 30' W. with fine weather, a shark was seen, and having enticed 

 him with a bait, we took him, finding many small fish on him, which he shook 

 ofiF when landed on deck, and seeing that where each fish had been there remained a hole 

 like a shot-hole, and being studded over with them, and what with the peculiar look of 

 the small ones, induced me to preserve two as specimens." — Thomas Cornish ; 

 June 24, 1870. 



Pongos. — The province of Mayamba is so overgrown with wood that you can travel 

 thirty days in the shade. The woods, Andrew tells us, are so infested with baboons, 

 monkeys, apes and parrots, that it is dangerous to venture among them. Of these the 

 pongo is more dangerous than the engeco. The pongo is in all his proportions like a 

 man, except the legs (which have no calves), but is of a gigantic size. When it walks 

 on the ground it is upright. It sleeps in trees, and makes a covering over its head to 

 shelter it from the rain. One sees that in the main he corresponds with M. du Chaillu, 

 thongb it is very likely he never saw a gorilla. I think, on the whole, that M. du 

 Chaillu scarcely is fair to him, when he says that his accounts of the gorilla are mere 

 traveller's tales. Andrew Battel,* as a common sailor naturally would, confused the 

 habits of the gorilla with those of the nshiego mbouve (pongo and engeco, as he calls 

 them), making the former the builder of the slielter-shed in the trees, instead of the 

 latter, though I doubt if he confuses either with the chimpanzee. He also says that 

 they walk upright, and that they go in bodies (which are very harmless errors, for they 

 attacked M. du Chaillu on foot), and that they beat away the elephants. With the 

 exception of these errors, Andrew's account of the gorillas agrees exactly with M. du 

 Chaillu's: as, for instance, " The young pongo hang upon their mother's belly, with 

 their arms clasped around them." This and other circumstances about them, though 

 written two centuries before he was born, confirm his statements in the most 

 remarkable manner, and should, we think, have met with a little more acknowledg- 

 ment.— /^rom • Tales of Old Travel^ bij Henry Kingsley (p. 74). 



Proceedings of the Entomological Society. 



June 6, 1870.— F. P. Pascoe, Esq., Vice-President, iu the chair. 



Additions to the Library. 

 The following donations were announced, and thanks voted to the donors : — 

 'Proceedings of the Royal Society,' No. 119; presented by the Society. 

 ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society,' 1869, parts 2 and 3 ; hy the Society. 

 'Journal of the Linnean Society,' Zoology, No. 48; by the Society. 

 ' Berliner Entomologische Zeitschrift,' 1870, parts 1 and 2 ; by the Entom. 

 Soc. of Berlm. ' Stettiner Entomologische Zeitung,' 1870, Nos. 7—9 ; by the 

 Entom. Soc. of Stettin. ' Coleopterologische Hefte,' part 6 ; by the Editor. 



* Andrew Battel was an English sailor, captured by the Portuguese in Equatorial 

 Africa, where he lived for eighteen years: he was captured about the year 1690. 



