Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/271

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way. All the gorilla beds I saw were on the ground. They consisted of a pile of leaves, about what the long arms of a gorilla could pull together without moving. I saw no signs of their occupying these hastily constructed sleeping places more than once.

The gorilla makes no abode, has no clothes, uses no tools, unless grasping a stick may indicate the beginnings of such an idea. It is still before the dawn of intelligence with him. Yet scientists tell me that he has the palate and muscles that enable man to talk. In spite of Mr. Garner the gorilla cannot talk, but no one knows how near to it he is. Probably he is a very long way from speech. Of course, a parrot can be taught to talk, but a parrot has no brains to speak of, so that his talking is of no significance. But recent studies of the brain of John Daniel seem to place his brain about on a par with that of a two-year-old child. Now a two-year-old child can both talk and think. If the gorilla with his child's brain could learn to use his voice even like a parrot, we should have come very near to having a contemporaneous "missing link." This, of course, is very unlikely to happen and it is not necessary, for science can make deductions from the gorilla's brain, muscle, habits, etc., which will enable us to understand more of the gorilla's significance for evolution without such a spectacular event as his acquiring speech. I mention such a thing merely as an unscientific way of trying to dramatize the importance of the study of the gorilla.

Of course it does not follow that because the