Our biological acquaintance with the West African anthropoids is considerably increased by the account given in the sixteenth century by the adventurer Battel, of Leigh, in Essex. This man passed through the forests of Lower Guinea, as sergeant of the Portuguese troops under the command of the Governor of Angola, Don Manuel Silveira Pereira. In 1613 Battel’s account was published by his neighbour Purchas in his _Pilgrims_ (12). Battel speaks of two kinds of large apes, the engeco and the pongo, which inhabited the forest on the banks of the Banna and the Mayombe. The engeco corresponds to the ndjéko or nschégo (chimpanzee), the pongo to the n’pungu of Loango, or the gorilla. Battel’s description of the habits of these animals affords some characteristic touches which will concern us presently. We may date our earliest acquaintance with the largest of all the anthropoids from this adventurer’s career. The Dutch physician Oliver Dapper published in 1668 a detailed description of Africa (13), in which there is much of value, and he mentions the large apes, called quojas morrau or morrou, which inhabit the kingdom of Congo (14). By these he apparently means the chimpanzee. Some account, unfortunately rather vague, of the gorilla has been recently given by Bowdich in his very interesting work on the “Mission of the Anglo-African Company to Ashanti” (15). He says that there are several remarkable species of apes in the territory of the Gaboon, among which the ingenu (gorilla) is the strangest. The natives asserted that this animal is much larger than the orang-utan, generally five feet tall, and four feet broad from shoulder to shoulder.