vi.) mentions, in the Mpongwe report, that the Njina tears off the toe-nails and the finger-nails of his human captives.  We should not believe so scandalous an assertion without detailed proof; it is hardly fair to make the innocent biped as needlessly cruel as man.  It is well known to the natives of the Old Calabar River by the name of “Onion.”  In 1860, the brothers Jules and Ambroise Poncet travelled with Dr. Peney to Ab Kuka, the last of their stations near the head of the Luta Nzige (Albert Nyanza) Lake, and Dr. Peney “brought back the hand of the first gorilla which had been heard of” ("Ocean Highways,” p. 482- -February, 1874).  The German Expedition (1873) reports Chicambo to be a gorilla country; that the anthropoid is found one day’s journey from the Coast, and that the agent of that station has killed five with his own hand.  Mr. Thompson of Sherbro ("Palm Land,” chap, xiii.) says of the chimpanzee:  “Some have been seen as tall as a man, from five to seven feet high, and very powerful.”  This is evidently the Njina, the only known anthropoid that attains tall human stature; and from the rest of the passage,[FN#23] it is clear that he has confounded the chimpanzee with the Nchigo-mpolo.

The strip of gorilla-country visited by me was an elevated line of clayey and sandy soil, cut by sweet-water streams, and by mangrove-lined swamps, backed inland by thin forest.  Here the comparative absence of matted undergrowth makes the landscape sub-European, at least, by the side of the foul tropical jungle; it is exceptionally rich in the wild fruits required by the huge anthropoid.  The clearings also supply bananas, pine-apple leaves, and sugar-cane, and there is an abundance of honey, in which, like the Nchigo, the gorilla delights.  The villages and the frequent plantations which it visits to plunder limit its reproduction near the sea, and make it exceedingly wary and keen of eye, if not of smell.  Even when roosting by night, it is readily frightened by a footstep; and the crash caused by the mighty bound from branch to branch makes the traveller think that a tree has fallen.

The gorilla breeds about December, a cool and dry month:  according to my bushmen, the period of gestation is between five and six months.  The babe begins to walk some ten days after birth; “chops milk” for three months and, at the end of that time may reach eighteen inches in height.  M. du Chaillu makes his child, “Joe Gorilla,” 2 feet 6 inches when under the third year:  assuming the average height of the adult male at 5 feet to 5 feet 6 inches, this measurement suggests that, according to the law of Flourens, the life would exceed thirty years.  I saw two fragmentary skins, thoroughly “pepper and salt;” and the natives assured me that the gorilla turns silver-white with age.