22 MAMMALS

as intelligent as a child might be within the last few
months of infancy, and had some notion of numbers
up to ten; but as far as her ‘language’ was dis-
coverable, it was limited to three sounds, one doing
duty for ‘Yes, another for ‘No, and another for
‘Thank you so much!’ She may, however, have
realised that ‘a still tongue makes a wise head ;’ at
any rate, like the little black chimpanzee now in her
place, she looked wise enough, particularly when boys
attempted to amuse themselves at her expense.

The gorilla (Gorlla Savage?) is so called after its
native name, the name of the species being in honour
of Dr. Savage, an English missionary in the Gaboon
country, who in 1847 sent drawings of its skull to
Sir Richard Owen. Du Chaillu published his account
of his discovery of this huge ape in 1861, but in 1860
there was a real live gorilla in this country in a
travelling show, whose proprietor was unaware of the
curiosity he possessed until after it was dead.

The gorilla is heavily built, as can be seen by the
skeletons in the top gallery at the Natural History
Museum at South Kensington, but this heaviness has
been exaggerated in most of the published woodcuts.
Like man and the chimpanzees, he has seventeen
joints in his backbone; but while man has twelve
ribs, he and the chimpanzees have thirteen. Another
point in which he resembles the chimpanzees is in
the absence of the ‘central’ bone in the wrist, which
is only found exceptionally in adult man. His teeth,
too, though similar in number and variety, are very
different in appearance from a man’s, owing to the
large size of the canines and wisdom teeth.