Identifier: africansketchboo01read (find matches)
Title: The African sketch-book
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Reade, William Winwood, 1838-1875
Subjects: Africa, West -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, Smith, Elder & co.
Contributing Library: Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston University

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t these nests of the Africanapes were made for a similar purpose. But I was toldthat they were made as birds nests are made—for theconfinement of the female. No doubt they are oftenused as sleeping-places, as birds roost in old nests ; butif they were always used for that purpose, would not the 1 The trees. . . are so closely planted that I have heard gorillas, here called sokos, growling about fifty yards off without getting a glimpse of them.His nest is a poor contrivance; it exhibits no more architectural skill thanthe nest of our cushat dove. Here the soko sits in pelting rain with hishands over his head. The natives give him a good character, and from whatI have seen he deserves it; but they call his nest his house, and laugh athim for being such a fool as to build a house and not go beneath it forshelter.—Livingstone to Lord Stanley, from the Manyema Country, No-vember 15, 1870. - Wallaces Indian Archipelago. This book is the best authority onthe habits of the ourang-outang.
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Gorillas and Nest. Book I) THE GORILLA 153 gorilla hunters merely lie in wait near the nest and shootthe ape as he went to bed ? But this I know they arenot in the habit of doing, and I fully believe in Water-tons maxim, that the monkeys have no home. The chimpanzee ranges along the whole coast fromSenegambia on the north to Angola on the south, butthe gorilla is found only to a little distance on each sideof the Equator, so far as the coast-regions are concerned.But Schweinfurth alludes to its existence in the countrynorth of the Albert Nyanza ; and Livingstone has shownthat they are found in the country west of Tanganyika.Now, as the gorilla frequents only the primaeval forest,we may hence infer that a vast belt of virgin forestextends across the African plateau from the Gaboon tothe Albert Lake; and certainly the tribes which Schwein-furth and Livingstone describe in the most distantcountries which they reached, closely resemble the bush-tribes of Gaboon. 154 DETAINED Having given

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