An introduction to the study of the anthropoid apes / by Arthur Keith.

  • Arthur Keith
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the study of the anthropoid apes / by Arthur Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    (259) and this opinion has been accepted in France, while all other countries have followed Savage, Wyman, and Owen, and retained them in one genus. There is no absolute standard of generic value ; but this much is certain, that the chimpanzee and gorilla are much more nearly correlated in structure than is either of these to the orang or gibbon, or the gibbon to the orang. (See Huxley, 59a, 59b ; Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 72; Broca, 104a; Duvernoy, 22; Hartmann, 139, 43; Gray, 133, 134 ; and Peters, 180.) [Also Wagner, 258a.] There may be well-marked species, sub-species, or varieties of the chimpanzee, but as yet the material at home and notes of habits from the jungle are totally insufficient for their determination. A very considerable literature has sprung up round the chimpanzee of Central Africa, but as already said, our material and information are not enough to afford us any certain grounds for separating the chimpanzee of this region from that of the West Coast. (See Giglioli, 31; Issel, 144; Hartmann, 138a, 139; Peters, 180; and Noack, 171.) As regards the number of species or well-marked varieties of chimpanzees on the West Coast of Africa, it is a very hard matter to decide in the present state of our information how far characters that have been assigned as of specific value are really so or are only individual peculiarities. Du Chaillu appears to me to be our safest guide in determining this question, and if he is right, and he can hardly have made a mistake, in saying that the voice and cry of T. Kooloo-Kamba is perfectly distinct in character from that of the other forms of chimpanzee, then I do not think he could have adduced any other feature or features so indicative of its being a certain and distinct species. Unfortunately he shot only one specimen, and its external configuration, so far as he describes it, agrees well enough with that of T. niger. He found it living also in a country inhabited by another form of chimpanzee, Nshiego-Mbouve (T. calvus). Bartlett (91) and Beddard (93) assigned “ Sally ” to the latter species. Unfortunately, Du Chaillu on his own statement had rarely seen T. tiiger in his travels, his acquaintance with it being almost restricted to a few young speci- mens in confinement, and he was therefore unaware of the amount of variation that might occur among the members of that species. In the article on the gorilla, p. 7, I made a very stupid blunder, which I now wish to remedy, and confounded the name Troglodytes tschego of Duvernoy with Gorilla gina of Geoffroy St. Hilaire. T. tschego is certainly a name applied to a chimpanzee, but the specific characters assigned by Franquet (30), Slack (73), and Duvernoy (22) are, every one of them, variable. The degree of prognathism, the last molar teeth, the pigmentation of the skin, the colour of hair, the external ear, and proportions of limbs to trunk are subject to considerable fluctuation in different individuals. “ Mafuca ” (170a, 58), T. aubryi (130), T. vellerosus (132) may or may not be representatives of distinct species ; probability is all in favour of their being only peculiarly marked individuals of the more common form.