G8 MR. G. L. BATES ON THE [Feb. 7, 



open nnd the tender inside eaten ; and we saw many old beds of 

 " mejom "-stalks broken down and matted together ; but we did 

 not get sight of a Gorilla. The tracks and beds on that occasion 

 showed that there was a family of three or four individuals there, 

 some of them small. On another occasion 1 saw a single bed, that 

 had been used by a solitary Gorilla only the night before. A 

 woman had heard the animal the evening before, breaking down 

 the stalks for his bed. I was told that Gorillas sleep on these 

 beds, which are thick enough to keep them a foot or two up from 

 the ground, in a sitting posture, with the head bent forward on 

 the breast. The people say they sometimes hear them snore. 

 Even when sleeping Gorillas ai-e hard to approach, as they waken 

 easily. An attempt, made at early dawn, to surround the one the 

 woman heard making his bed was unsuccessful. 



In most of the cases of which 1 have heard, of Gorillas being 

 killed by natives, they were met with accidentally in the daytime, 

 on the ground or in low trees in the outlying clearings. Many 

 natives do not venture to molest a male Gorilla, even when they 

 see one, as he is dangerous when woimded. I was told of a boy 

 having been killed by one, and I saw the severe wounds in a 

 man's thigh made by the biting of a wounded Gorilla. 



The only case of a white man's killing a Gorilla of which I 

 know is that of the German trader Paschen, in the Yaunde 

 country, to the north of where I have been. 



They say the male Gorilla sometimes utters a deep gruff call, 

 but I have not heard it. 



The Chimpanzee (Anthropopithecus). 



Chimpanzees are much more frequently killed by native hunters 

 than Gorillas, and nearly always in the forest, not in clearings. 

 When found in the forest, they are usually in companies of half- 

 a-dozen or so, in the trees or on the ground. They often make a 

 noise in the forest, which sounds very like the hallooing or excited 

 talking of men. Once even my guide w^as fooled by them, and, 

 on hearing them, inquired who those men hunting porcupines 

 could be. 



Once at a certain village, just as people were going to bed, a 

 Chimpanzee was heard in the forest near by, making a most 

 unearthly yelling. It slept in a tree near the village, and early 

 in the morning men went out with bows, and punctured its skin 

 with some poisoned arrows, before it had left its bed. "When I 

 went out a little later, I was shown the bed where it slept, made 

 of branches bi"oken and laid together, some 20 feet from the 

 ground. The animal had by then retreated into the top of a very 

 high tree, from which it could not escape except by coming nearer 

 the ground, and this it was afraid to do on account of the people 

 beneath. It was walking backwards and forwards along the 

 branches, screaming and beating them with its palms ; this it 

 kept up for an hour or two. It then became stupid and sat still 



