In Whitman's Hand

Annotations

About this Item

Title: Generalities

Creators: Walt Whitman, Unknown

Date: Between 1850 and 1860

Whitman Archive ID: duk.00087

Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the marginalia and annotations, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note(s): At one point, this manuscript likely formed part of Whitman's cultural geography scrapbook. An image of the verso of the backing sheet is unavailable.

Contributors to digital file: Ashlyn Stewart and Kevin McMullen


Key


Paste-on | Whitman's Notes on Paste-on | Whitman's Highlighting on Paste-on | Erasure | Overwrite



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Generalities
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The Mind and the Body.
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Also Ethnologiana


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AN ENORMOUS APE.—In a lecture recently delivered before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Prof. Owen described a new species of ape, discovered on the western coast of Africa, named the Gorilla species, the adults of which attain the height of five feet five inches, and are three feet broad across the chest. Its head is double the size of a man's, and its extremities are enormously developed. They exist in some numbers in the interminable forests of the Gambia river. The negroes of the country, in their excursions into the forests in search of ivory, exhibited little fear of the lion, as it slunk away from man, but they dreaded the gorilla, for when he saw man advancing he came down out of the trees to the attack, and could strangle a man with the greatest ease. The strength of this man-ape is enormous; his jaw is as powerful as that of a lion, and his canine teeth equally formidable. To this species—the great Gorilla—those reports and notices related of the much dreaded, ape-like animal of the African wilds, that were met with in the records of travellers, from old Rattell down to Mrs. Bowditch's reminiscences of Ashantee.


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