42 Animat Life 
at any considerable height from the ground must of necessity mean death. Yet from a 
number of other indications it is obvious that in the case of the gorilla (whose evolution 
is now rapidly nearing an end since the conquest of the Congo Forests by man will 
mean his inevitable extinction) there has been going on for the last few thousand years a 
return from an arboreal mode of life, towards existence on the ground, which, in the case 
of all anthropoid apes and man, was the universal mode of existence at what might be 
termed the “baboon” stage of their common evolution. My own humble opinion is that 
when mankind developed from a genus of apes of the parent stock that gave rise to the 
eibbons, the Dryopithecus, the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, he was a terrestrial 
animal, and had been so for a long time. The baboons are, 1 am convinced, but slightly 
divergent from creatures that formed an actual stage im man’s upward career, a stage 
higher than the preceding long-tailed monkeys and lower than the tailless ape, and the 
baboons have, to a great extent, left the trees and made thei home in preference among 
the rocks and crags. Therefore we may 
| with some probability assume that all 
the anthropoid apes in their earliest 
types were frequenters of the ground 
rather than of the trees, the progenitors 
of man becoming especially terrestrial. 
The rapid predominance which man 
attained at the end of the Tertiary 
Epoch was probably one of the principal 
agencies for the extermination of many 
allied and intermediate species of anthro- 
poid apes, and the cause which drove 
those four genera that survived (the 
eibbon, the orang, the gorilla, and the ~ 
chimpanzee) to an arboreal life amidst 
the densest forest. Where these creatures 
attempted rivalry with thei successful 
: _ cousin in the open they were ruthlessly 
ES | exterminated. But in the dense forests 
THE LARGEST GORILLA EVER CAPTURED. of West Central Africa, man, as repre- 
This photograph, reproduced by permission of Herr Umlauff in sented by the Congo Pygmies, was a 
“The Living Animals of the World,” is repeated here at the 7 : Res p R 
ACE OF Sw Ean, Golnacton, _poor and degenerate rival of the great 
anthropoid apes, and before the advent 
of superior types of negroes with weapons of real deadliness the gorilla, at any 
rate, had nothing to fear from contact with humanity. As therefore he grew bulkier 
and stronger, he left the exclusive life among the trees for a greater frequentation of the 
ground. He still had to remain in the forest, however; partly because it was there only 
that he could find abundant food, and partly because the negro tribes in the open could 
have easily exterminated him by their greater rapidity of movement and superior intelligence. 
Had man, however, never invaded the Congo Forest with stronger representatives than the 
Pygmies, we might in time have seen the gorilla develop into a hideous caricature of 
humanity, acquiring eventually colossal, elephant-like hind limbs which would have been 
strong enough to support in an erect position the huge, mis-shapen trunk. 
I see that it is still stated in the latest works on mammalia in the English 
language (such as that excellent volume by Mr. Beddard, in the Cambridge Natural, 
History Series) that the present range of the gorilla is confined to the forests of the 
West African coastlands between the Cameroons River on the north and the vicinity of 
the Congo on the south, This is erroneous. German explorers have shown that gorillas 
