Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/124

 116 GORILLA had their attention first called to it by the paper of Dr. Savage in vol. v. of the " Boston Journal of Natural History," in which he de-
 * the external characters and habits, and

Prof. Jeffries Wyman described four crania and several parts of the skeleton. Dr. Savage de- scribed it as troglodytes gorilla; Prof. Owen called it T. Savagei, retaining it in the same genus with the chimpanzee; Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire established for it the genus gorilla in 1852, and in 1853 gave it the name of G. gina, which is the best known, though G. Savagei has a prior claim. The common names of the n'Ma among the natives of the region where found are engeena, geena, and engeela. There are specimens of the animal, more or less complete, in the collections at Philadelphia, Boston, London, and Paris ; and Du Chaillu, on his return to the United States in August, 1859, from the country about the Gaboon river, brought with him several complete specimens, Gorilla. male and female, both skins and skeletons, in excellent preservation, most of which are now in the London collections. Du Chaillu is the first white man who killed a gorilla with his own hand, or who had an opportunity of study- ing its habits in its native forests. The skull male is longer and wider, but less heavy, than that of man, and the capacity of the cavity which contains the brain is less than one half of that of the most degraded human races. The most striking peculiarity is the great develop- ment of the interparietal and occipital crests and the ridges over the orbits, which give an angular outline to the skull, resembling the orangs in the first and the chimpanzee in the
 * .ara.-t-r ; there is a great thickness of

the orhital walls, with much space between the orbits, and a prominence on the inner wall di- rected outward ; n noteworthy character is the coalescence of the n.-i-al I .ones above, with a median suture on their lower half, the upper portion ascending above the nasal processes of the superior maxillary and becoming contracted between them, slightly projecting as in man ; the crests are much less in the female. The cranial crests, wide zygomatic arches, and mas- sive lower jaw give indication of the power- ful muscles. The dental formula is the same as in man and the higher quadrumana; the canines are enormous, the incisors very wide, the lateral ones being more pointed, and the lower molars have five tubercles instead of four. The bones of the trunk and extremities are remarkable for their size and strength; the length of the cervical spines is such that the nape is more prominent than the back of the head ; the scapula and bones of the arm indicate the attachment of muscles in com- parison with which man's seem like those of a child. The expression of the face is scowl- ing; the nose is very flat and widely open ; the ears are small ; the eyes are much sunk in the head, and the lashes are short and thick ; the mouth is very wide, the lips large and thin, the lower one pendulous and very movable, the chin short and receding, and the whole muzzle prominent; the face is transversely wrinkled and black. The chest is capacious, the shoul- ders very wide, and the abdomen everywhere projecting. The limbs are greatly developed and of immense strength ; the arms are longer than in the chimpanzee, reaching far down the leg, but according to Owen, whose ob- servations are generally confirmed by the specimens of Du Chaillu, the arms do not extend so low as the knee; while the arm and forearm are longer than in the chimpan- zee, the hand is shorter, wider, and more hu- man in its carpal and metacarpal portions and the lateral position of the thumb ; from the length of the palm the fingers appear short and thick as if swollen; they are also less free, as the posterior portion of the three in- termediate fingers is covered by the undivided integument. There is very little appearance of wrist, the circumference at this part being twice that of a strong man's ; the fingers taper to a point, are not arched, and the nails are flat and relatively small ; the fingers are about twice the circumference of man's, and the skin of the middle joint is callous from the habit of the animal of applying these surfaces to the ground when it adopts a favorite way of pro- gression by swinging its body forward sup- ported by and between the hands; the thumb is short, and not more than half the size of the fore finger. The posterior extremities are oc- casionally used alone in standing and in pro- gression; the thigh is relatively short, and of a nearly uniform size, in its middle portion not surpassing in circumference the same part in man ; the leg increases in thickness from be- low the knee to the ankle ; the tendinous por- tion of the muscles is developed more than the fleshy, with a great gain in strength. Tho foot is longer than the hand, and is human- like also in having the three intermediate toes