young men of the Gaboon tribe make excursions into the forests in quest of ivory, the enemy they most dread to meet 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, and clutching at the nearest foe. The hideous aspect of the animal, with his green eyes flashing with rage, is heightened by the skin over the orbits and eyebrows being drawn rapidly backwards and forwards, with the hair erected, producing a horrible and fiendish scowl. If fired at, and not mortally hit, the Gorilla closes at once upon his assailant, and inflicts most dangerous if not deadly wounds, with his sharp and powerful tusks. The commander of a Bristol trader once saw a negro at the Gaboon frightfully mutilated from the bite of a Gorilla, from which he had recovered. Another negro exhibited to the same voyager a gun barrel bent and partly flattened by a wounded Gorilla in its death struggle. The strength of the Gorilla is such as to make him a match for a lion, whose strength his own nearly rivals. Over the Leopard, invading the lower branches of his dwelling-place, he will gain an easier victory; and the huge canine teeth, with which only the male Gorilla is furnished, doubtless have been given to him for defending his mate and offspring. As the appearance and some of the movements of the Gorilla are very man-like, some of the natives consider that the souls of men have entered into their bodies, and hence many apologies are made for some of their tricks and reported doings. Moreover, from this belief some of their skulls are made objects of fetish worship, and are marked with broad stripes of red paint, crossed by a white one. These were the stories told to Savage. On returning to America, Savage investigated the parts of the skeletons he had obtained, and compared them with those of the Chimpanzee. Owen, in England, having received some corresponding specimens, continued the investigation, and all were agreed in deciding that the Gorilla was a species in itself, differing from the Chimpanzee, but sufficiently like it to be connected with it in a genus. The Gorilla was termed _Troglodytes Gorilla_, and the Chimpanzee, which will be noticed in the next chapter, kept its name of _Troglodytes niger_. The word Troglodytes was very ill chosen, and it does not refer in any way to the nature or habits of the animals. It was taken from τρωγλοδύται, the name of an Ethiopian tribe who dwell in holes or caves. The native name is Ngina. The descriptions of the habits and anatomy of the Gorilla, fragmentary as they were, excited great interest in the minds of many travellers, and especially in that of Du Chaillu, who left America in 1855, determined to explore Gorilla Land, and to obtain some of the great Apes, dead or alive.