240 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. XIX. No. 482 



COLLECTING GORILLA BRAINS. 

 At a r&cent meetiDg of the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia, Dr. Henry C. Chapman described three 

 gorilla brains collected by the Rev. R. H. Nassau, D.D., in 

 1890, upon the Ogove River, West Africa. The brains have 

 been presented by him, through Dr. Tbos. G. Morton, to 

 the academy. Dr. Chapman's observations upon these 

 brains are embodied in a paper now in the course of publi- 

 cation in the Academy's Proceedings. At the close of Dr. 

 Chapman's communication, Dr. Nassau related his exper- 

 iences when obtaining the brains. The' appended <xtracts 

 are from two letters written by him to Dr. Morton in 1890, 

 in whioh he tells the story of the two expeditions he made 

 to obtain them. The extracts have been made by the kind 

 permission of these gentlemen. Jas. E. Ives. 



Talaguga, Ogove River, 



Gaboon and Ooesico Mission, 



West Africa, March 7, 1890. 



I made all plans with great forethought as to details; the 

 season would be cool and dry, when I could hunt with less 

 discomfort ; no flooded low grounds ; a large proportion of the 

 leaves fall in the dry season, leaving the thickets less dense and 

 giving better chance for spying animals. There are scarcely 

 any gorillas in this Talaguga region; I have known of 

 but two being killed during the eight years I have been 

 here. So I closed my house and went down the seventy 

 miles to Kangwe. There I chose a good crew of eight 

 young men. Four carboys of chloride of zinc had been 

 carefully kept all these years; I took a jugful of it. Not to 

 waste my alcohol (in which was to be immersed the brain 

 as it should finally go to you), I took along several gallons 

 of rum. . . . Proper receptacles were taken for receiving 

 the brains. I took my Winchester and double-barrelled 

 gun (suitable for either shot or bullet), and invited with me 

 one of our French associates, M. Gacon, a Swiss sharpshooter, 

 who had the latest Swiss army breach-loading rifle. For 

 the native hunters I took two of the best (very poor at best) 

 flint lock muskets from the Trading House, good for two 

 weeks, etc. 



From this point I will copy from my diary written at 

 the time. 



"Wednesday, July 17, 1889. Rose early and by 9 a.m. 

 were at our destination. M. Gacon, after our noon meal, 

 impatiently went out to hunt with Ogula. They returned 

 having seen signs of gorillas, but not having seen the ani- 

 mals themselves. A council was held in the evening with 

 the villagers as to time, routes and the art of hunting a 

 gorilla. Everybody was sure I should not be in the village 

 four days without succeeding; they told wonderful stories 

 of the numbers and audacity of the gorillas, that not two 

 days passed but that somebody saw them in the gardens. 

 As the garden work is done principally by women, it was 

 they who most frequently saw them, sometimes actually 

 meeting them in the path and being pursued by males. 

 From all their accounts the gorilla is full of the arts and 

 tricks of the monkey tribe, quick to read faces. The women 

 being unarmed and afraid, the animals were more daring 

 to them than to men. But they all said that we white 

 people would have no chance of getting so near, that the ani- 

 mils would detect our strange odor and fear our white faces. 

 They hoped we would kill many, for their gardens were 

 devastated by gorillas, pigs, oxen and elephants. Most of 

 the men said that though they often saw these animals, they 

 were afraid to shoot with their flint-locks that often uncer- 



tainly flashed in the pan or whose slug-shots were not im- 

 mediately fatal; that then they were at the mercy of the 

 wounded beasts. They warned us, if we met with a male 

 gorilla who dared to face us, not to Are till only a few yards 

 distant, and, even then, not to aim at the head, for the ani- 

 mal had the art, being acquainted with guns, and all have 

 informed each other (so the natives believe), of ducking down 

 its head at the click of the trigger. We were to aim at the 

 abdomen, which from its size could not fail to be injured, 

 and the head or chest would probably be pierced by the 

 animal's having ducked its head down to dodge a shot 

 aimed, as it supposed, at its head. 



"Thursday, July 18. We all went, some fourteen men 

 and eight dogs, in the boat to a large island shortly after sun- 

 rise. My own crew of six were afraid and I left them in the 

 boat, and Ogula described the lie of the land so that they 

 were to follow around to another part where we should prob- 

 ably emerge. The rest of us entered the thicket, very dense; 

 it grows up so wherever there are abandoned plantations. 

 The original forest is easily threaded, for the dense foliage of 

 the tall trees kills out by its shade the underbrush. But the 

 gorillas are looked for mostly in the plantations, old and 

 new. But after four hours of search nothing was heard or 

 even seen except the tracks of the wild pigs. In the after- 

 noon Okendo, whose plantation was on another part of the 

 island we had been at, came in frantic haste saying a gorilla 

 was just seen by his wife. We went. Sure enough, there 

 were the pieces of sugar-cane the beast had chewed and spat 

 from his mouth, still wet with spittle, and the broken 

 branches of cassava marked his exit from the garden. We 

 divided into three companies, to the right and left and centre. 

 I was in the centre with Osamwamani. M. Gacon went with 

 Ogula to the right. Ogula was the only one who saw the 

 gorilla, a female; but it disappeared before he could draw 

 on it. This stimulated our plans that night for the next 

 day's work. 



"Friday, July 19. M. Gacon started in a canoe with 

 three men at 5 a.m., and I followed an hour later in the boat 

 with my crew and four men, the crew as usual awaiting us 

 in the boat. We went in the general region of the previous 

 afternoon ; there were frequent and fresh signs, dung still 

 warm. The thicket was impossible to be passed by a human 

 being in any other than the too noisy way of cutting with 

 the long knives we carried, or by crawling on our bellies 

 imder the mass. The mass of vines, bushes and, worst of 

 all, a grass growing many yards in length whose long, nar- 

 row leaves were, on their edges, as sharp as knives. The 

 density of this growth above killed out the leaves lower 

 down, and the thicket was tunnelled with many passages, 

 intersecting and opening out into spaces of a square rod or 

 two where might be a clump of trees, and where the animals 

 had their sleeping places on the lower branches. You per- 

 ceive that even if a gorilla was heard or sighted in such a 

 thicket while we were crawling on our bellies, it could get 

 away before we could snatch our gun into position, and, if 

 the animal should only be wounded, we should be in a very 

 ugly place for defending ourselves. The trail became so 

 hot we were sure the animal was near. We divided, M. 

 Gacon going with Ogula to one side and I and Osamwamani 

 to the other. Suddenly we heard the dog Hector barking 

 sharply, and shortly after the screams of a baby gorilla. 

 The noises did not seem to be more than forty or fifty feet 

 from us; we could see nothing. The barking became more 

 savage, the screams more agonized, and, as we tore our way 

 through the thicket, there was added the angry howl of a 



