104 THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
had -proposed Griphornis as a name for the creature, but he‘has: 
abandoned it in favor of Archeopteryx of Von Meyer. 
For nine years a committee of the British Association have been 
engaged in experiments on the preservation of vegetative power in 
seeds. They have established the fact that ‘‘the greatest age at which 
the seeds experimented upon were found to vegetate was about forty 
years.” Much progress has been made in acclimitization; the intro- 
duction of the eland into England has sueceeded—that of camels into 
this continent is regarded as promising, and already the warbling of 
the feathered songsters of Europe has been heard in the Australian — 
woods. 
The gorilla controversy so far as it relates to the credibility of M. Du 
Chaillu may be regarded as set at rest. Mr. Reade, after five aetive 
months in the country the habitat of the creature, asserts “that he is 
in a position to state that M. Du Chaillu shot neither leopards, buffa- 
loes, nor gorillas; that the gorilla does not beat his breast like a drum $ 
that the Kulukambu does not utter the ery of Kooloo or anything like 
it; that the young gorilla in captivity is not savage ; and that while 
M. Du Chaillu affects to have been “a poor fever-stricken wretch” 
at Camma, he was really residing in robust health at the Gaboon.” 
Mr. Reade, however, adds that he “must do M. Du Chaillu the 
justice to confess, that from the same sources that afforded me proof 
of his impostures, I learn that he is a good marksman; possessed of 
no common courage and endurance; that he has suffered many 
privations and misfortunes of which he has said nothing; that ‘his. 
character as a trader has been unjustly blemished; that his labours.as 
a naturalist have been very remarkable ; and that during his residence 
in Africa he won the affection of the natives and the esteem of those 
who most merit to be esteemed—the missionaries.” Mr. Reade’s 
communication ends with the just and generous expression of his: 
regret ‘as a fellow-laborer though an humble one, that, actuated by 
a foolish vanity or by ill advice, he should have attempted to add 
artificial flowers to a wreath of laurels which he had fairly and hardly 
earned.” 
Another and a more important controversy relative to the gorilla 
has arisen between Prof. Owen and Prof. Huxley, extending to the 
general consideration of the differences in the structure of the brain 
between man and anthropoid apes. The question discussed by these 
eminent anatomists has been ably treated by Dr. Wagner, with refer-- 
