hands clasped about her. Many of them are
taken by shooting the mothers with poisoned
arrows.’ ‘The same writer asserts that, on the
death of one of these animals, the survivors cover
the body with leaves and branches of trees. Pur-
chas adds, in a note, that Battel had informed him,
in private conversation, that he had known a
young negro who had been carried away by the
Pongos, and lived a whole year in their society.
On his return, he reported that they had offered
him no harm, and that they were of the stature of
ordinary men, but much thicker and stouter.
The latest notice of the habits of the Chimpanzee in a state of nature, is by Lieut. Sayers, who obtained possession of a young one in 1838, which he brought to England. He concludes that it ascends trees only for food or for observation ; from the negroes he learned that “ they do not reach their full growth till between nine and ten years of age; which if true, brings them extremely near to the human species; as the boy or girl of West Africa, at thirteen or fourteen years old, is quite as much a man or woman as at the age of nineteen or twenty in our more northern climate. Their height, when full grown, is said to be between four and five feet: indeed, I was credibly informed that a male Chimpanzee, which had been shot in the neighbourhood, and brought into Freetown, measured four feet five inches in length; and was so heavy as to form a very fair load for two men, who carried him on a pole between them. The natives say that, in the wild state, their strength is enormous; and that they have seen them snap boughs off the trees with the greatest apparent ease, which the united strength
