40 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
shelter, and waiting till dark, we should find it occupied. In this hope we were not disappointed. 
Lying quite still in our concealment (which tried my patience sorely), we at last, just at dusk, heard 
the peculiar ‘ Hew, hew, liew,’ which is the call of the male to his mate. We waited till it was quite 
dark, and then I saw what I had so longed all the weary afternoon to see. A Nschiego was sitting in 
his nest. His feet rested on the lower branch, his head reached quite into the little dome of the roof, 
and his arm was clasped firmly round the tree-trunk. This is their way of sleeping. After gazing 
till I was tired through the gloom at my sleeping victim, two of us tired, and the unfortunate beast fell 
at our feet without a struggle, or even a groan. We built a fire at once, and made our camp in this 
place, that when daylight came I might first of all examine and skin my prize. The poor Ape was 
the NSCHIEGO MBOUVE. (From, a Stuffed Spec imen.) 
hung up to be out of the way of insects, and I fell asleep on my bed of leaves and grass, as pleased a 
man as the world could well hold. Next morning I had leisure to examine the Nschiego. 
“ I was at once struck with points of difference between it and the Chimpanzee. It was smaller, 
and had a bald black bead. This is its distinctive character. This specimen was three feet eleven 
inches high, or long. Tt was an adult. Its skin, where there is no hair, is black, and the thick breast 
and abdomen are covered with short and rather thin blackish hairs. On the lower part of the abdomen 
the hair is thinnest, but this is not perceived unless looked at carefully, as the skin is the colour of the 
hair. On the legs the hair is of a dirty gray, mixed with black. The shoulders and back have black 
hair between two and three inches long, mixed with a little grey. The arms down to the wrist have 
also long black hair, but shorter than in the Gorilla. The hair is blacker, longer, glossier, and thinner 
in general than that on the Gorilla, and the skin is not so tough. I noticed that the bare places, where 
the hair is worn off by contact with hard substances in sleeping, were different from the bare places 
which are so conspicuous on the common Chimpanzee. 
