ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



almost a total ignorance of his actions in life. 

 Illustrations which show him upside down, 

 slothlike, and with a short rounded snout are 

 wholly at fault. He never suffers the inverted 

 position for a longer time than it takes to clam- 

 ber topside again. As to his snout, it is quite 

 long and slender, with a curious Roman break 

 in it, which with his usual half-shut eyes con- 

 veved an air of peevish aloofness which was 

 very characteristic and amusing. 



When given the run of a large packing case, 

 he was constantly making his way over the 

 branches and twigs, occasionally taking a few 

 laps at his milk and egg. When the first hint 

 of dawn appeared, he chose a small calibred 

 crotch, or the crossing place of two twigs, se- 

 cured a firm grip with both hind feet, one facing 

 front, the other backward, bowed into a perfect 

 sphere, and gave himself up to the luxury of 

 Cyclopean day-dreams. 



TROOPS OF CHIMPANZKES. ON OPEN 

 PLAINS. 



A LETTER OF THRILLING INTEREST FROM 



Mr. R. L. Garner. 



Fernan Vaz, Gabon, 

 Congo Francais, October 1, 1917. 



Dear Mr. Hornaday: 



Your letter of June 18 came about the 20th 

 of August, and found me camped in a tent on 

 the south bank of Lake Ntyonga, an arm of 

 Lake Fernan Vaz, about four hours by canoe, 

 north-east of Omboue, where the post is located. 



I have an ideal place here for our purposes 

 and if I had designed it myself, I doubt if I 

 could have done it so well as nature has. I am 

 building a new house here to shelter myself and 

 comrades from the approaching rains that are 

 now beginning. My new abode is on the margin 

 of the lake on the edge of a great plain stretch- 

 ing miles away to the southward and extending 

 about the same distance east and west. 



The plain (or plains) is traversed by wide 

 belts of forest which afford asylum to vast num- 

 bers of antelope, buffalo, chimpanzees, monkeys 

 and birds of countless kinds and numbers. On 

 the opposite side of the lake about a mile away 

 is a boundless forest, one of the favorite resorts 

 of the gorilla and the home of herds of elephants. 



During all my experiences in Africa, through- 

 out twenty-five years of travel and sojourn in 

 the heart of the habitat of the chimpanzee, I 

 have seen here what I never saw before, and 

 that is schools of chimps playing out on the open 



plain, and crossing the plain in full view, a dis- 

 tance of nearly half a mile, and within three 

 hundred yards of a dozen natives at work on my 

 house. 



One day a school of ten passed over the plain 

 in full view and the younger ones were gambol- 

 ing like human "kids." Another day three 

 adults came within less than two hundred yards 

 of us and seemed intensely curious to learn what 

 we were doing. Another day two mothers, each 

 carrying a baby, one on her back and the other 

 with the babe under her arm. clinging to her 

 side. 



Yesterday a big, stoical-looking fellow passed 

 within two hundred yards of us. and seemed 

 quite indifferent to the presence of my fourteen 

 erewboys. cook, houseboy and myself. More 

 than a dozen times within the last few weeks, 

 from one to ten crossed from bush to bush, and 

 rarely showed the least timidity. 



I am preparing to entertain them next year 

 in my garden, where I shall try to have a boun- 

 tiful supply of sugar cane and pineapples for 

 them to steal. I have postively forbidden any 

 of my people disturbing them in any way, by 

 chasing, yelling or otherwise, as I want to see 

 how near I can come to taming them in a wild 

 state. Not that I expect, in any sense, to tame 

 them as they are tamed in captivity ; but to get 

 them so that they can be closely approached, 

 studied and photographed in the open. 



No doubt after the war closes there will be a 

 rush for such animals to restock the decimated 

 gardens of Europe, but the supply will be great- 

 ly restricted because of the new and stringent 

 regulations of the chase in these colonies. I am 

 truly glad of them, because in the past anybody 

 could go out and slaughter whole bands of ani- 

 mals for $1.50 a year. Now, the sporting li- 

 cense is $1,000, and the commercial license $200, 

 and there are many restrictions on them. For 

 example, the chimps enjoy absolute protection 

 under all licenses, and it is almost as great a 

 penalty to kill one as it is to kill a man. The 

 maribou and several other kinds of birds are 

 absolutely immune, and hence the reckless 

 slaughter that formerly prevailed is now much 

 reduced. 



Just at this moment five maribou are feeding 

 on the plain, three of them about sixty yards 

 away. They seem to be utterly indifferent to 

 the presence of a score of people, nineteen of 

 them trying to persuade the twentieth man to 

 shoot one of those stately birds to feed a multi- 

 tude of ebony-colored gluttons. 



Here they come ! At this moment seven 

 chimps are crossing the plain, and now that they 



