Dr. L. J. Sanford on the Gorilla. 49 
The natives of Africa have always regarded the gorilla with 
a feeling of superstitious dread. To some of them, he is a mys- 
terious demon. Those who believe in the transmigration of 
souls, consider him as a compound of man and brute—their ex- 
planation being, that at the death of a wicked man, his spirit en- 
ters the body of a lesser ape, which immediately becomes a go- 
rilla, and which, when so inhabited, can neither be killed nor 
conquered. Others see so much of human attributes about the 
animal that they acknowledge him as a kinsman, one however 
so superior to themselves, that they dare not cultivate any inti- 
macy or even acquaintance with him. ese, and so many other 
Page and traditions are believed in by the various human 
tribes of Africa, that comparatively few among them, can know 
the gorilla as simply the immense ferocious ape that he is. 
e have no means of knowing when this species was first 
ized. The name Gorilla was applied to some animal of 
the ape kind, longer ago than the beginning of the Christian era, 
for, in the Periplus of the Carthaginian voyager Hanno, who was 
sent to circumnavigate the African continent, in the sixth cen- 
tury before Christ as it is supposed, is the following passage: 
could not be prevailed on to accompany us. Having killed them, 
kita with us to Carthage. 
We did not sail farther on, our provisions failing us.”* Accord- 
the name gorillas was ¢ s. ‘Two of them yet re- 
mained in the temple at the time Carthage was taken by the Ro- 
“ Penetravit in eas ( es Insulas) Hanno Penoram 
Imperator, rodiditque hirta feminaram corpora, viros pernicitate 
Vassisse, duarumque gorgonum cutes argumenti et miraculi 
sare: in J unonis templo posuit, spectatas usque ut Carthaginem 
captam. 
Hanno’s gorilla, may have been the progenitor of the animal 
known at the present time by the same name, but this is improb- 
able unless the race has wonderfully improved in its later gen- 
erations, for, the gorilla with which we are acquainted is non- 
* Voyage of Hanno (Falconer’s translation). page 18. 
Am. Jour. Sct.—Szcoxp Serres, Vor. XXXIII, No. 97.—Jan., 1862. 
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