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Show 1905.] MR. R. I. POCOCK ON A HAINAN GIBBON. 171 decided by observing what happens in the ensuing winter, should tlie animal still be in the Gardens. Menstruation reappeared on Feb. 6 to 8, and has continued at tolerably regular monthly intervals since. Hence it may, I think, be laid down as an established fact that in Gibbons the interval between the menstrual discharges is a little over the calendar month and that the discharge continues for from two to three days. Determinat ion of the Sex. When Mr. de St. Croix brought the specimen to the Gardens he informed me that she was a castrated male; and in support of his opinion drew my attention to the large size of the clitoris, which he most naturally mistook for the penis. The naked and turgid labia of the vulva he regarded as the unhealed wound caused by castration; and the menstrual discharge which first appeared in December of 1903, when the Ape was on her way to England, he attributed to normal bleeding induced by enforced sitting on the hard floor of her travelling-box. He also told me that it is commonly believed in Hainan that female specimens of the Gibbon are never brought to the coast and are practically unobtainable. There can be no doubt that this belief, coupled with the peniform clitoris of the Gibbon, misled Mr. de St. Croix as to the true sex of his animal, the castration of which, he admitted, he had not himself witnessed. And it seems probable that the belief itself is traceable to repeated mistakes on the part of Europeans in determining females as castrated males on account of the unusual length of the clitoris in these Apes as compared with the same organ in the Monkeys of the Old World generally. In this connection it is interesting to recall the fact that Dr. Harlan *, after dissection of the generative organs, described his specimen of Hylo-bates concolor as " an hermaphrodite Orang Outan." It appears to me, however, that Lesson's criticism of this opinion was perfectly justifiable and his decision that the specimen was an immature female undoubtedly correct. Pousargues, also, who evidently did not know Lesson's paper, came independently to the same conclusion, and stated that in the type of Hylobates nasutus, a young female, the clitoris was well developed and grooved below; and that the animal resembled in every particular, so far as the generative organs were concerned, the Gibbon determined as an hermaphrodite by Harlan. And since Harlan and two other doctors, presumably acquainted with human anatomy, who assisted at the dissection, were deceived as to the true sex of the specimen, in spite of the best possible opportunities for investigation, it is no wonder that the Europeans living in Hainan fall into a similar mistake. So far as can be seen, the clitoris of our Hainan Gibbon is like that of the specimen figured and described by Harlan, which resembled the penis of a Primate in a state of hypospadias. A * For Bibliography, see infra pp. 174-175. |
