The treasury of natural history, or, A popular dictionary of zoology / by Samuel Maunder.
- Maunder, Samuel, 1785-1849.
- Date:
- 1870
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The treasury of natural history, or, A popular dictionary of zoology / by Samuel Maunder. Source: Wellcome Collection.
795/856 (page 773)
![lively so counterpoising its forward projec- tion. If the Gorilla be surprised aud ap- proached while on the ground, he drops his stick, betukes himself to all-fours, applying the back part of the bent knuckles of his fore hands to the ground, and makes his way rapidly, with an oblique swinging kind of gallop, to the nearest tree. There he awaits his pursuer, especially if his family be near and requiring his defence. No negro wil- lingly approaches the tree in which the male Gorilla keeps guard. Even with a gun the experienced negro does not make the attack, but reserves his fire in self-defence. The enmity of the Gorilla to the whole negro race, male and female, is uniformly attested. *' The young men of the Gaboon tribe make armed excursions into the forest in quest of ivory. The enemy they most dread on these occasions is the Gorilla. If they have come unawares too near him with his family, he does not, like the lion, sulkily retreat, but comes rapidly to the attack, swinging down to the lower branches, aud clutching at the nearest foe. The hideous aspect of the ani- mal, with his green eyes flashing with ruge, is heightened by the skin over the prominent roof of the orbits being drawn quickly back- ward and forwurd,with the hair erected, caus- ing a horrible and fiendish scowl. If fired at and not mortally hit, the Gorilla closes at ; once upon his assailant, and inflicts most dan- gerous, if not deadly wounds, with his shurp and powerful tusks. The commander of a Bristol trader told the author he had seen a uegro at the Gaboon frightfully mutilated by the bite of the Gorilla, from which he had recovered. Another negro exhibited to the same voyager a gun-barrel bent and partly flattened by the bite of a wounded Gorilla in | its death-struggle. Negroes, when stealing I through the gloomy shades of the tropical forest, become sometimes aware of the proxi- mity of one of these frightfully formidable i apes by the sudden disappearance of one of their companions, who is hoisted up into the tree, uttering perhaps a short choking cry. , In a few minutes he falls to the ground u < strangled corpse. The Gorilla, watching his opportunity, has letdown his huge hind hand, I seized the passing negro by the neck with i vice-like grip, has drawn him up to higher I branches, and dropped him when his strug- gles had ceased. The above account may be taken us a fair record of the habits aud prowess of this formidable beast, whose strength is appa- rently equal to that of a full-grown lion. The statements of Ilanno and Battel as to the animal’s gregariousness do not appear | to be fully borue out by recent testimony, j As to their reputed misconduct in obliging negresses to accompany them to their sylvan haunts, that is clearly un unjust accusation. | Our anthropomorphous brother, as some I would call him, is guiltless in this respect. It the brute deserves consideration, it lies in : the notorious circumstance that both parents , display a most affectionate regard tor their I oil spring, not unfrequently risking their lives to save the wee four-handed bairns from the clutches of the naturul history col- | lector, or rather from the negroes who col- ect for him. Notwithstanding the expres- sion of these sympathies, it is our sincere desire that the enterprising Mr. Du Chaillu, or some other individual having an equal eye to business and the requirements of science, may yet succeed in transporting hither a live member of the fraternity, whose animated features it shall be our happiness co scrutinise in the delightful grounds of the Zoological Society, Regent’s Park. HECTOCOTYLUS. A name first cm- ployed b3* Cuvier to indicate a supposed ge- ! nus of animals parasitic on cuttle-fishes. It I is now’ known, however, that these Hecto- j cotyli are neither more nor less than de- tuched arms of the male Argonaut and other allied eephalopods. The arm is specially modified into a copulatory organ, which is capable of being periodically castoff aud re- newed. [See Argonaut, p. 35.] IIYiENODON. The generic title of an extinct carnivorous animul, whose skeletal remains are to be found in the upper eocene beds of IIordwe 11 in Hampshire A second species occurs in the miocene strata of D£- bruge and Aluis in France. These quad- rupeds, judging by their cutting teeth, appear to have possessed highly destructive pro- pensities ; they were about the size of our larger carnivora, such as wolves, leopards, I or hyaenas. HYL^EOSAURUS. This name was pro- I posed by Dr. Muntell to characterise a genus of huge dinosaurian reptiles, whose remains were found in the VVealden strata at Tilgute Forest in the year 1832. This gigantic quad- rupedal lizard was at least twenty-five feet in length ; it was furnished with a thick coat of mail, consisting of dense osseous scales or scutes, like those of our existing crocodiles, and the ridge of the back supported a number i of these defensive plates,which, however, in this situation presented a conical outline, being prolonged into most formidable spines. This is not a mere matter of conjecture, be- cause these structures were found in one slub, at least, in the immediate neighbourhood of the vertebral segments, without doubt origi- nally occupying the position so fuithfullv represented in the restored forms modelled under the superintendence of Mr. Water- house Hawkins, and now displuyed in the Crystal Palace grounds at Sydenham. In his excellent Report on British Fossils com- municated to the meeting of the British As- sociation held at Plymouth in 1841, Prof. Owen refers to the detection of this animal’s fossil remains in these terms : “ The Hy- IsBOsaurus lias not been made known, like the MegaloKuurus, from detached parts of the skeleton successively discovered and analo- gically recomposed, but was at once brought into the domain of pahcontology by the discovery of the following parts of the skeleton in almost naturul juxtaposition, viz., the anterior part of the trunk, including ten of tho anterior vertebra in succession! supporting asmull fragment of the base of the skull ; the two coracoids, the coracoid extremities of both scupului, detached ver- | i tebrie, several ribs more or less complete, and I](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24864201_0795.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
