Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/757

Rh almost attained the length of those of lions and tigers. On the upper part of the skull, which is rounded in youth, great bony crests are developed on the crown of the head and on the occiput, and these are supported by the high, spinous processes of the cervical vertebræ, and thus supply the starting-point for the powerful muscles of the neck and jaw. The supraorbital arches are covered with wrinkled skin, and the already savage and indeed revolting appearance of the old gorilla is thereby increased. A comparison of the two illustrations (Figs. 1 and 3) which accompany the text will make this clear.

These distinctions are not so striking in the female as in the male gorilla. Although there is much which is bestial in the appearance of an aged female, yet the crests, so strongly marked in the male, the projecting orbits, and strong muscular pads are absent in the female, as well as the prognathous form of the skull and the length and thickness of the canine teeth. The aged female gorilla is not, in her whole structure, so far removed from the condition of the same sex in youth as is the aged male. The structure of the female has on the whole more in common with the human form. It has been said, and indeed on good authority, that the female type should take the foremost place in the study of the animal structure, since it is the more universal. But H. von Nathusius maintains that we must take both sexes into consideration in the study of domestic animals, since both are needed to determine the breed. I accept this condition in the scientific study and description of wild animals also, of every kind and species. All that is said of the universal type of the female animal is and must remain in my eyes a mere phrase. Only the accurate observation of males and females, and of young individuals of both sexes, can throw sufficient light on the history of the race. The male animal is the larger, and predominant with respect to the complete development of certain peculiarities of form in the specific organism, since these are doubtfully present in the adult female, and are either altogether absent in the immature young, or only rudimentary.

Let us now consider, in the first place, the prototype of the species, the aged male gorilla in the full strength of his bodily development (Fig. 1). This animal, when standing upright, is more than six feet in height, or two thousand millimetres. The head is three hundred millimetres in length. The occiput appears to be broader below than above, since the upper part slopes like a gabled roof toward the high, longitudinal crest of the vertex. The projecting supraorbital arches start prominently from the upper and central contour of the skull. In this species, as in other apes, and indeed among mammals generally, and especially in the case of the carnivora, ruminants, and multi-ungulates, eyebrows are present. In the gorilla these consist of a rather scanty growth of coal-black bristles, about forty millimetres in length. Beneath the projecting supraorbital arches are the eyes, opening with