Zoological Society, 07 



many years ago and sold to a French captain who never returned, 

 and that it was the only individual taken out of the river. From 

 what I know, the young skull would very much resemble that of 

 the chimpanzee. I have four crania (two male and two female), 

 with many bones, though not a perfect skeleton ; but I hope to 

 complete one before I leave the river, and to procure a dead sub- 

 ject, which I shall preserve in spirits. Great uncertainty however 

 attends my success, as they are indescribably fierce and dangerous, 

 and are found only far in the interior ; they are killed by elephant- 

 hunters only in self-defence. 



" Below you have a sketch of the cranium of the male (No. 1) 

 and female (No. 2), executed for me by Mrs. Prince, the wife of 

 Dr. Prince, the English Baptist Missionary at Fernando Po, who is 

 here for a short time in search of health, a, a are two low ridges 

 converging as seen in the sketch, and uniting at x, and forming a 

 strong prominent ridge in the course of the sagittal suture, which 

 comes into a junction with a lateral ridge, d, sent back from the 

 petrous portion of such temporal bone ; e is a strong fossa of tri- 

 angular shape between the ridges a, a. The space between the 

 zygoma and temporal bone in a transverse direction is If inch deep ; 

 the diameter from before backwards 3 inches ; at 6 is a sinus 

 about half an inch in depth and an inch in length, with foramina 

 for the passage of blood-vessels and nerves. The two upper middle 

 incisor teeth are absent, but their sockets show their size to have 

 been nearly if not quite double the two outer ones. The two lower 

 middle incisor teeth are narrower than the two outer. 



" The female cranium is a full-grown one, but differing from the 

 male in the prominence of the ridges, the two anterior corresponding 

 to a, a in the male, and the central are rudimental only, except at the 

 extremes of the latter where it joins the posterior transverse ridge, 

 lettered d in the male. It has lost the two middle upper incisors, which 

 bear the same relation in respect to size to the two outer that those of 

 the male do. All the incisors both in the upper and lower jaw are 

 larger than they are in the male. The canines in the female are 

 shorter than in the male. These points are all that I need specify- 

 to enable you to identify the crania with any in your possession. 

 You will greatly oblige me by a comparison, and communicating 

 the result at your earliest convenience." 



Professor Owen having, at the time when he received this in- 

 formation, observed in the cranium of a young but nearly adult 

 Troglodytes niger that the canine teeth presented the same sexual 

 superiority of development* as in the orang's (Pithecus), believed 

 it possible that the marks of distinction mentioned by Dr. Savage 

 might prove to be the fully developed characteristics of old and 

 powerful males of the Troglodytes niger ; and in the absence of 

 means of making comparisons of other characters, besides superior 

 size, longer and larger canine teeth, and concomitant strong sagittal 

 and lambdoidal cristse, he had deemed it better to communicate 



* Odontography, pi. 118, 119, fig. 1. 



5* 



