CHAPTER XX 



The Gorilla — His Habitat — Skeleton — Skull — Color — 

 Structural Peculiarities 



IN the order of nature the gorilla occupies the second 

 place below man. His habitat is the lowlands of trop- 

 ical West Africa, and it is confined to very narrow limits. 

 The vague lines which bound his realm cannot be defined 

 with absolute precision, but those generally given in books 

 that treat of him are not correct. If he ever occupied any 

 part of the coast north of the equator, he has long since 

 become extinct in that part ; but there is nothing to show 

 that he ever did exist there. So far as I have been able 

 to trace the lines that define the extent of his native haunts, 

 they appear to confine him to the low delta country lying 

 between the equator and the Loango valley along the 

 coast, and reaching eastward to the interior — an average 

 distance of less than one hundred miles. The eastern 

 boundary is very irregular. The extreme limit on the 

 north side is about the Gaboon River, eastward to the foot- 

 hills of the Crystal Mountains ; thence southward to the 

 Ogowe River to the vicinity of the mouth of the Nguni ; 

 thence up that river twenty or thirty miles ; thence by a 

 zigzag line along the western base of the dividing lands 

 between the Congo basin and the Atlantic watershed, to 

 the head-waters of the Chi Loango River, and with that 



