cries; the mother having disposed of one
infant, returned to the rescue of the other, but
before she could descend with it, her retreat
was cut off. Seeing one of the negroes level his
musket at her, she, clasping her young with one
arm, waved the other, as if deprecating the shot.
The ball passed through her heart, and she fell
with her young one clinging to her. It was a
male, and survived the voyage to Havre, where
it died on arriving."

The Gorilla constructs himself a snug
hammock out of the long, tough, slender stems of
parasitic plants, and lines it with the broad
dried fronds of palms, or with long grass—a
sort of bed surely not to be despised, swung in
the leafy branches of a tree. By day, he sits on
a bough, leaning his back against the trunk,
owing to which habit elderly gorillas become
rather bald in those regions. Sometimes, when
walking without a stick, he clasps his hands
across the back of his head, thus instinctively
counterbalancing its forward projection. The
natives of Gaboon always speak of the gorilla
in terms which imply a belief in his close
kinship to themselves. But they have a very low
opinion of his intelligence. They say that
during the rainy season he builds a house
without a roof, and that he will come down and
warm himself at the fires left by them in their
hunting expeditions; but has not the wit to
throw on more wood out of the surrounding
abundance to keep it burning, " the stupid old
man." Mimic though he be, he cannot even
catch the trick of human articulation so well as
the parrot or the raven. The negroes aver that
he buries his dead by heaping leaves and loose
earth over the body.

Wherein does the gorilla differ from the
previously known anthropoid, or man-like,
tailless apes? Of these there are three
distinct genera: the gibbon, or long-armed ape,
the orang-outang, and the chimpanzee. It is a
peculiarity of the quadrumana (or monkey and
ape tribe generally) that the brain is very
precociously developed. Hence, when they are young,
with small milk-teeth, fully developed brain, and
globular-shaped cranium, they look, comparatively
speaking, quite promising characters. But,
in the large apes, the orang and the chimpanzee,
maturity brings a vast access of physical force,
without any corresponding enlargement of the
brain, which becomes masked and overlaid by
the prominence of the brute attributes. The
jaws expand to receive the great tusk-like teeth;
and then, to work such massive jaws, comes a
large addition of fleshy fibres to the muscles, and
for these great muscles an increased surface of
attachment in the corresponding bones. Hence
the physiognomy becomes more brutish, and less
human, in maturity. Hence, too, the small
species of monkeys and apes, in whom this
development of physical force does not take place,
are far milder and more intelligent-looking than
the more highly organised orang and chimpanzee
when full grown; though these latter have
absolutely a larger amount of brain, and several other
modifications of the bony structure which
bring them in reality, as we have said, nearest
to man. Hence, too, it was that Cuvier, who
had seen none but young specimens, much
exaggerated the nearness of this approach in his
Règne Animal. The gorilla surpasses the orang
and chimpanzee in this peculiarity; and it is the
lowering ferocity of his countenance produced
by immense jaws and teeth, the bony prominence
over the eyes, and the relative insignificance of
the brain, which have induced some naturalists
to rank him below the previously known species
of chimpanzee.

He has other claims to precedence, besides
this cogent one of more brain and a more
convoluted brain. The distinctive characteristic of
the order, that which supplies it the name,
quadrumana, is, as we all know, the having hands
instead of feet—four hands. And in the
comparative anatomist's eyes, the most
characteristic peculiarity of man's structure is the
great toe; it is mainly this which enables
him to walk erect, which constitutes the
great difference between a foot and a hand,
and entitles him, sole genus of his order,
sole species of his genus, to his zoological
appellation bimana, or two-handed. In the
gorilla, the thumb of the hind hand is more
like a great toe than it is, either in the orang-
outang or chimpanzee: it is thicker and stronger.
The heel also, makes a more decided backward
projection, and in the fore-hand, that
important member, the thumb, is better developed.
A disproportionate length of arm gives, as we
notice in the deformed, a singularly awkward
and ungainly aspect to the figure. This is
a familiar attribute of all monkey-kind, and
one which, in its gradual diminution, marks
the gradual rise in the scale of organisation.
In the gibbons, or long-armed apes, these
members hang down to the feet, so that the
whole palm can be applied to the ground without
the trunk being bent. In the orang, they
reach the ankle; in the chimpanzee, below the
knee; in the gorilla, a little short of the knee;
while in man, below the middle of the thigh.

There are other advances of structure
interesting to the anatomist, and all tending to
support the gorilla's claims to the topmost
place. Now and then we come across a human
face in which the bony framework of the eye is
almost circular, with a repulsive, cunning,
monkey-like look. This, though universal, is
one of the ugliest characteristics of the monkey.
The gorilla, however, is exempt from this
particular detail of ugliness; the bony setting of
the eye is squarish, as in most men.

Again and again it strikes the fancy—
strikes deeper than the fancy—that the honey-
making, architectural bee, low down in the
scale of life, with its insignificant head, its
little boneless body, and gauzy wing, is our
type of industry and skill: while this apex
in the pyramid of the brute creation, this
near approach to the human form, what can it
do? The great hands have no skill but to clutch
and strangle; the complex brain is kindled by no
divine spark; there, amid the unwholesome