The accounts given by the earliest observers of gorillas would lead us to expect that the attempt to tame even young apes of this species must be fruitless. Du Chaillu tells us that he obtained a young male gorilla, a creature of from two to three years old, which was quite as furious and unmanageable as any adult specimen could have been. The negroes of the district between the Rembo and Cape Santa Catharina had surprised the mother and her young one in the forest, and after killing the former, they succeeded, with great difficulty, in capturing the latter by throwing a cloth over his head. By means of a wooden slave-fork, fixed upon its neck, the animal was transported to the village in which Du Chaillu was staying at the time. Young as he was, the gorilla displayed extraordinary strength, and after he had been successfully fastened into his cage, he contrived to attack his new master again, tearing his trousers, and then retreating sullenly into a corner. He would only eat the wild berries and fruits collected for him in the forest, and also the soft parts of pine-apple leaves. He escaped from his cage, and was only recaptured, after many fruitless endeavours, by throwing a net over him. The traveller adds that he had never seen so furious a creature as this gorilla. He flew at every one who came near him, bit the bamboo lattice-work of his cage, and showed, on every possible occasion, that he was of a thoroughly malicious and unkindly nature. He broke loose a second time, and was again captured, and at the end of ten days he died suddenly. Somewhat later Du Chaillu obtained a young female gorilla, which clung affectionately to its mother’s dead body, so that all the spectators were affected by its grief. The creature was too young to be fed on anything but milk, and since this was unattainable, it died three days after its capture. Reade, Lenz, and Buchholz were more fortunate in their experience with the gorillas captured by them, and Lenz wrote to me as follows about one of these animals:--“On my return to the Gaboon from a journey to Okanda, I was attacked by a somewhat serious fever which hung about me for a long while. A living gorilla, which was brought to the German factory on the Gaboon, was some compensation to me for this involuntary idleness. The creature came from Kamma (Fernand Vaz), the place from which Du Chaillu also obtained his specimens, and was captured out of a troop of eight animals. A small dog, which had been somewhat injured by an old gorilla, afterwards killed, prevented the young one from escaping until a negro came up, seized it by the neck, and got another man to bind its hands. In this way the gorilla was conveyed to the basket-factory of the house, and there, as is unfortunately done in most cases, the two large canine teeth were filed off for fear of his using them to bite his captors.