THE GORILLA. 531 



restless, nomadic beast, wandering from place to place, and rarely 

 staying for two days together in the same neighbourhood. This 

 restlessness, it is surmised, is partly due to the scarcity of its 

 favourite food, for being a huge feeder it soon eats up the supply 

 to be procured within a limited area. He found gorillas always 

 on the ground, and states that it is not true that they live much or 

 at all on trees, for although they often climb trees to pick berries 

 or nuts, they return to the ground when this has been accom- 

 plished. Among other articles upon which they feed, a kind of 

 nut with a very hard shell is a favourite food. The shell is so 

 hard that it requires a strong blow with a heavy hammer to break 

 it, and here is probably one purpose of that enormous strength of 

 the jaw which had long seemed to him to be thrown away on a 

 non- carnivorous animal. 



" Only the young gorillas sleep on trees, for protection from 

 wild beasts. I have myself," he writes, " come upon fresh traces 

 of a gorilla's bed on several occasions, and could see that the male 

 had seated himself with his back against a tree-trunk. In fact, on 

 the back of the male gorilla there is generally a patch on which 

 the hair is worn thin from this position." 



Du Chaillu pronounced gorillas to be utterly untamable, which 

 theory was .formed through the intractable disposition of two 

 young ones he tried to tame. " The gorilla," he remarks, " is 

 entirely and constantly an enemy to men — resenting its captivity, 

 young as my specimens were — refusing all food except the berries 

 of its native woods, and attacking with teeth and claws even me, 

 who was in most constant attendance upon them; and finally 

 dying without previous sickness, and without other ascertainable 

 cause than the restless chafing of a spirit whicb could not suffer 

 captivity nor the presence of man." 



Mr. Winwood Eeade, in his paper already referred to, states that 

 he spent five months in the gorilla country, and did not leave that 

 part of Africa till he had completely satisfied himself respecting 

 the habits of the animal. " The evidence which I now lay before 

 you," he said, addressing the Zoological Society, " is composed of 

 statements made to me by men who had killed gorillas. It is 

 collected from three distinct parts of Equatorial Africa, viz., from 



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