562 WILD ANIMALS. 



It is as well to point out, however, tliat tlie number of osteological 

 features in wMcli a resemblance can be traced between the gorilla 

 and man are more than counterbalanced by the number of most 

 important ones in which it exhibits a very marked divergence. 



Accepting, however, this ferocious, scowling, long-armed ape, 

 with its brutish mouth, noseless, chinless, deep-ridged face as the 

 nearest structural type of a human being in the animal world, yet 

 what an immense gulf has to be surmounted in the intellectual or- 

 ganization and capacity to connect the gorilla even with the lowest 

 savage. The one communicating his ideas by language, using fire, 

 cooking food, exhibiting ingenuity in the fashioning of hisTequisite 

 weapons, or in the designing of other articles necessary for his 

 well-being, and possessing an intellect capable of receiving and 

 applying instruction, and above all of worshipping a deity. The 

 other, with great hands that have no skill but to clutch and 

 strangle, with brain power dwindling instead of increasing from 

 birth to maturity, and living without displaying any other attri- 

 bute but the power of satisfying its own appetite to support life 

 amid the unwholesome luxuriance of a dark, dense, tropical forest. 

 As this ape was in the beginning so it is now, and so probably it 

 will be to the end, living in sullen isolation, without improving 

 physically or mentally, it propagates its species and dies. There 

 is nothing approaching anything human in it, except in the gross 

 caricature which its appearance presents of some hideous deformity 

 in our race, and many " missing links " will have to be found 

 before a chain can be fashioned that will directly connect man, 

 made to stand erect in the image of his Maker, intellectually or 

 physically, with any of the known wild animals. 



