Introduction 



" wild man ") was bestowed on the larger ape, the " gorilla," 

 first discovered in the Gaboon by American missionaries 

 about 1847. 



But although, through Professor Owen's examination of 

 the skulls sent home by these missionaries, the existence of 

 the gorilla was determined as a form distinct from the chim- 

 panzi in the coastlands of West Central Africa, north of the 

 Congo, the emphatic identity of this large ape was not pro- 

 perly appreciated till after the journeys of Paul du Chaillu 

 at the close of the 'fifties. Yet actually, before du Chaillu 

 brought home definite accounts of the gorilla, a female 

 gorilla was being (about 1855) exhibited through the English 

 countryside in a travelling menagerie ; and outside the walls 

 of an old farm-house in Berkshire was suspended a large 

 gorilla skull, not realised as what it was till a few years ago, 

 when it was figured in Country Life. The female gorilla of 

 the circus died about the time of Paul du ChaiUu's exciting 

 book and lectures of the early 'sixties, and was identified by 

 the superintendent of the Zoological Society. 



The existence of a large species of chimpanzi in the Bahr-al- 

 ghazal region and the adjoining forests of North-east Congo- 

 land had been discovered by Schweinfurth in the early 

 'seventies. Stanley, myself, the Baptist Missionary pioneers 

 — especially Grenfell — reported the existence of some form 

 of chimpanzi on the Upper Congo (north bank) in the 'eighties. 



Livingstone in 1870 had noted the existence of the chim- 

 panzi (" Soko ") on the west side of Tanganyika in a form — 

 Anthropopithecus troglodytes marungensis — which may be only 

 a sub-species or variety of Schweinfurth's chimpanzi. This 

 chimpanzi of Marungu has been thought to extend its range 

 almost as far south as the vicinity of Lake Mweru. In the 



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