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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
quantity of beads or a bright cotton umbrella. In one page we are told 
of some prince with an unpronounceable name, and an equivocal code of 
morals, who kindly offers to place bis 11 better ” halves at the disposal of the 
accomplished white man. In another, we learn how some amorous princess, 
with more sentiment than propriety, protects the interests of the traveller. 
These incidents are varied by an occasional murder, and the changes are 
rung upon what African explorers term a u palaver.” By the way, it would 
seem as if the aboriginal tendencies in this direction were contagious to 
Europeans, for we seldom find a work on Africa which does not extend 
over double the number of pages into which it might reasonably have been 
compressed. We do not, however, desire to call our author to account on 
this score ; we would merely mention that the great bulk of his volume is 
occupied by the ordinary details of a traveller’s diary, and is therefore of 
little importance to the scientific reader. It must, however, be admitted, to 
M. Du Chaillu’s credit, that his book contains a good deal of matter highly 
interesting to the zoologist and the student of ethnology. We shall pre- 
sently quote passages in proof of this, but in doing so we may mention that 
many of the facts recorded in his former work, and so strenuously denied by 
some of our leading naturalists, have been corroborated by the author’s 
later inquiries. Concerning these we may especially refer to the contro- 
versies on the character and habits of the gorilla, and the Potamogale velox. 
These discussions may now be looked upon as closed, at least for the present. 
Most of M. Du Chaillu’s assertions as to the habits, &c., of the gorilla, have 
been substantiated by his recent examination of these creatures in their wild 
condition, and the investigations of Professor Allman, of Edinburgh, show 
that in the affair of the Potamogale the author was correct and his critics 
did him an injustice. 
There are three points in this volume to which our readers’ attention 
should be directed. These are the history of the Obongos or negro dwarfs, 
the account of the African ant-hills, and the description of the skulls which 
the author brought home with him. It is to Professor Owen’s pen that we 
owe the chapter on these latter, a fact which lends a scientific interest to the 
work such as might not otherwise attach to it. It seems to us that M. Du 
Chaillu might have done something more to investigate the tribe of Obongos 
than he seems to have attempted. The Obongos appear to be a most in- 
teresting, diminutive race, of an extremely degraded type, and it would have 
been of the highest importance to ethnology to have had a careful anato- 
mical description of them. They are a tribe of dwarfs, dwelling in huts 
of the rudest description, and living upon the results of their hunting 
expeditions. They do not seem to be so small— if we may judge from the 
author’s measurements — as M. Du Chaillu would have us believe. Indeed, 
so far as we can gather from the following description, they are a race closely 
allied to the Boschismen of more southern Africa : — 
u The colour of these people was of a dirty yellow, much lighter than the 
Ashangos who surrounded them, and their eyes had an untameable wildness 
about them that struck me as being very remarkable. In their whole ap- 
pearance, physique, and colour, they are totally unlike the Ashangos among 
whom they live. The Ashangos declare that the Obongos intermarry among 
themselves, sistersVith brothers, doing this to keep the families together as 
much as possible. " Their foreheads are exceedingly low and narrow, and 
