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Show 52 for an attack and always acts on the offensive. prepares c ' 1 1 The cry he utters resembles a grunt more than .a ~row ' ant . is similar to the cry of the Chimpanzee, when untat~d, but d It . ·a to be audible at a great distance. vastly lou er. IS sa1 . 0" His preparation consists in attendmg the feroal~s an~ youn, by Whom he is usuallv accompanied, to a httle distance. ones, .. . . He however soon returns, with his crest erect and proJecting for~ard, his ~ostrils dilated, and his under-lip throw~ down.; at the same time uttering his characteristic yell, des1gned, It would seem, to terrify his antagonist. Instantly, unless he is disabled by a well-directed shot, he makes an onset,. a~d, striking his antagonist with the palm of his hands, or se1z1ng him with a grasp from which there is no escape, he dashes him upon the ground, and lacerates him with his tusks. "He is said to seize a musket, and instantly crush the barrel between his teeth. This animal's savage nature is very well shewn by the implacable desperation of a young one that was brought here. It was taken very young, and kept four months, and many mean were used to tame it; but it was incorrigible, so that it bit me an hour before it died." Mr. Ford discredits the bouse-building and elephant - driving stories, and says that no well-informed natives believe them. They are tales told to children. I might quote other testimony to a similar effect, but, as it appears to me, less carefully weighed and sifted, from the letters of MM. Franquet and Gautier I.Jaboullay, appended to the memoir of M. I. G. St. Hilaire, which I have already cited. Bearing in mind what is known regarding the Orang and the Gibbon, the statements of Dr. Savage and l\ir. Ford do not appear to me to be justly open to criticism on a p?~iori grounds. The Gibbons, as we have seen, readily assu~e the erect po turc, but the Gorilla is far bette1· fitted by Its organization for that attitude than are tl1e Gibbons : if the laryngeal pouches of the Gibbon , a i v ry likely, are 53 important in giving volume to a voice which can be heard for half a league, the Gorilla, which has similar sacs, more largely developed, and whose bulk is fivefold that of a Gibbon, may well be audible for twice that distance. If the Orang fights with its hands, the Gibbons and Chimpanzees with their teeth, the Gorilla may, probably enough, do either or both; nor is there anything to be said against either Chimpanzee or Gorilla building a nest, when it is proved that the Orang-Utan habitually performs that feat. With all this evidence, now ten to fifteen years old, before the world, it is not a little surprising that the assertions of a recent traveller, who, so far as the Gorilla is concerned ' really does very little more than repeat, on his own authority, the statements of Savage and of Ford, should have met with so much and such bitter opposition. If subtraction be made of what was known before, the sum and substance of what M. Du Chaillu has affirmed as a matter of his own observation respecting the Gorilla, is, that, in advancing to the attack, the great brute beats his chest with his fists. I confess I see nothing very improbable, or very much worth disputing about, in this statement. With respect to the other man-like Apes of Africa, M. Du Chaillu tells us absolutely nothing, of his own knowledge, regarding the common Chimpanzee; but he informs us of a bald-headed species or variety, the nschiego mbouve, which builds itself a shelter, and of another rare kind with a comparatively small face, large facial angle, and peculiar note, resembling "Kooloo." As the Orang shelters itself with a rough coverlet of leaves, and the common Chimpanzee, according to that eminently trustworthy observer Dr. Savage, makes a sound like "Whoo-whoo," -the grounds of the summary repudiation with which M. Du Chaillu's statements on these matters have been met is not obvious. If I have abstained from quoting M. Du Chaillu's w9rk, then, it is not because I discern any inherent improbability |