Man's Place in Nature, and Other Essays. Thomas Henry Huxley
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“I was induced,” says Dr. Savage (using the term Orang in its old general sense), “to believe that it belonged to a new species of Orang. I expressed this opinion to Mr. Wilson, with a desire for further investigation; and, if possible, to decide the point by the inspection of a specimen alive or dead.” The result of the combined exertions of Messrs. Savage and Wilson was not only the obtaining of a very full account of the habits of this new creature, but a still more important service to science, the enabling the excellent American anatomist already mentioned, Professor Wyman, to describe, from ample materials, the distinctive osteological characters of the new form. This animal was called by the natives of the Gaboon “Engé-ena,” a name obviously identical with the “Ingena” of Bowdich; and Dr. Savage arrived at the conviction that this last discovered of all the great Apes was the long-sought “Pongo” of Battell.
The justice of this conclusion, indeed, is beyond doubt—for not only does the “Engé-ena” agree with Battell’s “greater monster” in its hollow eyes, its great stature and its dun or iron-grey colour, but the only other man-like Ape which inhabits these latitudes—the Chimpanzee—is at once identified, by its smaller size, as the “lesser monster,” and is excluded from any possibility of being the “Pongo,” by the fact that it is black and not dun, to say nothing of the important circumstance already mentioned that it still retains the name of “Engeko,” or “Enché-eko,” by which Battell knew it.
In seeking for a specific name for the “Engé-ena,” however, Dr. Savage wisely avoided the much misused “Pongo”; but finding in the ancient Periplus of Hanno the word “Gorilla” applied to certain hairy savage people, discovered by the Carthaginian voyager in an island on the African coast, he attached the specific name “Gorilla” to his new ape, whence arises its present well-known appellation. But Dr. Savage, more cautious than some of his successors, by no means identifies his ape with Hanno’s “wild men.” He merely says that the latter were “probably one of the species of the Orang;” and I quite agree with M. Brullé that there is no ground for identifying the modern “Gorilla” with that of the Carthaginian admiral.
Since the memoir of Savage and Wyman was published, the skeleton of the Gorilla has been investigated by Professor Owen and by the late Professor Duvernoy, of the Jardin des Plantes, the latter having further supplied a valuable account of the muscular system and of many of the other soft parts; while African missionaries and travellers have confirmed and expanded the account originally given of the habits of this great man-like Ape, which has had the singular fortune of being the first to be made known to the general world and the last to be scientifically investigated.
Two centuries and a half have passed away since Battell told his stories about the “greater” and the “lesser monsters” to Purchas, and it has taken nearly that time to arrive at the clear result that there are four distinct kinds of Anthropoids—in Eastern Asia, the Gibbons and the Orangs; in Western Africa, the Chimpanzees and the Gorilla.
The man-like Apes, the history of whose discovery has just been detailed, have certain characters of structure and of distribution in common. Thus they all have the same number of teeth as man—possessing four incisors, two canines, four false molars, and six true molars in each jaw, or 32 teeth in all, in the adult condition; while the milk dentition consists of 20 teeth—or four incisors, two canines, and four molars in each jaw. They are what are called catarrhine Apes—that is, their nostrils have a narrow partition and look downwards; and, furthermore, their arms are always longer than their legs, the difference being sometimes greater and sometimes less; so that if the four were arranged in the order of the length of their arms in proportion to that of their legs, we should have this series—Orang (14⁄9—1), Gibbon (11⁄4—1), Gorilla (11⁄5—1), Chimpanzee (11⁄16—1). In all, the fore-limbs are terminated by hands, provided with longer or shorter thumbs; while the great toe of the foot, always smaller than in Man, is far more moveable than in him and can be opposed, like a thumb, to the rest of the foot. None of these apes have tails, and none of them possess the cheek-pouches common among monkeys. Finally, they are all inhabitants of the old world.
The Gibbons are the smallest, slenderest, and longest-limbed of the man-like Apes: their arms are longer in proportion to their bodies than those of any of the other man-like Apes, so that they can touch the ground when erect; their hands are longer than their feet, and they are the only Anthropoids which possess callosities like the lower monkeys. They are variously coloured. The Orangs have arms which reach to the ankles in the erect position of the animal; their thumbs and great toes are very short, and their feet are longer than their hands. They are covered with reddish-brown hair, and the sides of the face, in adult males, are commonly produced into two crescentic, flexible excrescences, like fatty tumours. The Chimpanzees have arms which reach below the knees; they have large thumbs and great toes, their hands are longer than their feet, and their hair is black, while the skin of the face is pale. The Gorilla, lastly, has arms which reach to the middle of the leg, large thumbs and great toes, feet longer than the hands, a black face, and dark-grey or dun hair.
For the purpose which I have at present in view, it is unnecessary that I should enter into any further minutiæ respecting the distinctive characters of the genera and species into which these man-like Apes are divided by naturalists. Suffice it to say, that the Orangs and the Gibbons constitute the distinct genera, Simia and Hylobates; while the Chimpanzees and Gorillas are by some regarded simply as distinct species of one genus, Troglodytes; by others as distinct genera—Troglodytes being reserved for the Chimpanzees, and Gorilla for the Engé-ena or Pongo.
Sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like Apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure.
Once in a generation, a Wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through the tropical wilds of America and of Asia; to form magnificent collections as he wanders; and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections: but, to the ordinary explorer or collector, the dense forests of equatorial Asia and Africa, which constitute the favourite habitation of the Orang, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla, present difficulties of no ordinary magnitude: and the man who risks his life by even a short visit to the malarious shores of those regions may well be excused if he shrinks from facing the dangers of the interior; if he contents himself with stimulating the industry of the better seasoned natives, and collecting and collating the more or less mythical reports and traditions with which they are too ready to supply him.
In such a manner most of the earlier accounts of the habits of the man-like Apes originated; and even now a good deal of what passes current must be admitted to have no very safe foundation. The best information we possess is that, based almost wholly on direct European testimony, respecting the Gibbons; the next best evidence relates to the Orangs; while our knowledge of the habits of the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla stands much in need of support and enlargement by additional testimony from instructed European eye-witnesses.
It will therefore be convenient in endeavouring to form a notion of what we are justified in believing about these animals, to commence with the best known man-like Apes, the Gibbons and Orangs; and to make use of the perfectly reliable information respecting them as a sort of criterion of the probable truth or falsehood of assertions respecting the others.
Of the Gibbons, half a dozen species are found scattered over the Asiatic islands, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and through Malacca, Siam, Arracan, and an uncertain extent of Hindostan, on the main land of Asia. The largest attain a few inches above three feet in height, from the crown to the heel, so that they are shorter than the other man-like Apes; while the slenderness of their bodies renders their mass far smaller in proportion even to this diminished height.
Dr. Salomon Müller, an accomplished Dutch naturalist, who lived for many years in the Eastern Archipelago, and to the results of whose personal experience I shall frequently have occasion to refer, states that the Gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees. All day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees; and though, towards evening, they descend in small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they