r in full, for
comparison with other narratives:

"He always rises to his feet when making an attack, though he approaches
his antagonist in a stooping posture.

"Though he never lies in wait, yet, when he hears, sees, or scents
a man, he immediately utters his characteristic cry, prepares for an
attack, and always acts on the offensive. The cry he utters resembles
a grunt more than a growl, and is similar to the cry of the Chimpanzee,
when irritated, but vastly louder. It is said to be audible at a great
distance. His preparation consists in attending the females and young
ones, by whom he is usually accompanied, to a little distance. He,
however, soon returns, with his crest erect and projecting forward,
his nostrils dilated, and his under-lip thrown down; at the same time
uttering his characteristic yell, designed, it would seem, to terrify
his antagonist. Instantly, unless he is disabled by a well directed
shot, he makes an onset, and, striking his antagonist with the palm of
his hands, or seizing him with a grasp from which there is no escape, he
dashes him upon the ground, and lacerates him with his tusks.

"He is said to seize a musket, and instantly crush the barrel between
his teeth.... This animal's savage nature is very well shown by the
implacable desperation of a young one that was brought here. It was
taken very young, and kept four months, and many means were used to tame
it; but it was incorrigible, so that it bit me an hour before it died."

Mr. Ford discredits the house-building and elephant-driving stories, and
says that no well-informed natives believe them. They are tales told to
children.

I might quote other testimony to a similar effect, but, as it appears to
me, less carefully weighed and sifted, from the letters of MM. Franquet
and Gautier Laboullay, appended to the memoir of M. I. G. St. Hilaire,
which I have already cited.

Bearing in mind what is known regarding the Orang and the Gibbon, the
statements of Dr. Savage and Mr. Ford do not appear to me to be justly
open to criticism on 'a priori' grounds. The Gibbons, as we have seen,
readily assume the erect posture, but the Gorilla is far better fitted
by its organization for that attitude than are the Gibbons: if the
laryngeal pouches of the Gibbons, as is very likely, are important
in giving volume to a voice which can be heard for half a league, the
Gorilla, which has similar sacs, more largely developed, and whose
bulk is fivefold t