Generalities

AN ENORMOUS APE.—In a lecture recently delivered before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Prof. Owen described a new species of ape, discovered on the western coast of Africa, named the Gorilla species, the adults of which attain the height of five feet five inches, and are three feet broad across the chest. Its head is double the size of a man's, and its extremities are enormously developed. They exist in some numbers in the interminable forests of the Gambia river. The negroes of the country, in their excursions into the forests in search of ivory, exhibited little fear of the lion, as it slunk away from man, but they dreaded the gorilla, for when he saw man advancing he came down out of the trees to the attack, and could strangle a man with the greatest ease. The strength of this man-ape is enormous; his jaw is as powerful as that of a lion, and his canine teeth equally formidable. To this species—the great Gorilla—those reports and notices related of the much dreaded, ape-like animal of the African wilds, that were met with in the records of travellers, from old Rattell down to Mrs. Bowditch's reminiscences of Ashantee.