The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science in-
vited its members to a conversazione at the South Kensington Mu- seum on Saturday. The galleries of this admirably managed public establishment are peculiarly suited for such assemblies, being well lighted and well ventilated, and affording ample recreation for those who do not as well as those who do converse. The conversazione of Saturday was entirely successful. Among those present were the President, Lord Brougham, Lord and Lady Shaftesbury, Lord and Lady Ducie, the Bishops of Durham and Winchester, Mr. and Mrs. A. Kinnaird, Mr. Joseph and Miss Napier, Mr. and Mrs. Monsell, the Recorder of London and Mrs. Gurney, Dr. and Mrs. Lankester, Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, Miss Carpenter, and Mr. John Simon.
The Lord Mayor entertained Sir Charles Eastlake and the Royal Academecians on Saturday, and invited to meet them several con- spicuous artists, not belonging to the Academy, several distinguished literary and scientific men, and also a goodly Bost of military and naval notables and Members of Parliament. But there was one guest whose presence attracted attention—M. Achille Fould. There were speeches from the Duke of Cambridge, Major-General Sabine, Sir Charles Eastlake, Mr. Monckton Milnes, Lord Stanhope, and Sir Roderick Murchison; but the speech which all will read was that delivered by the French guest, not because it contains anything ex- traordinary, but because it is the speech of a Frenchman made in English, and of a late Minister of the Emperor Napoleon. M. Fould had a toast to himself, and he thus answered:
"I am exceedingly flattered by the honour conferred on me by the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress in inviting me to this splendid banquet. It is a great gratification for me to find myself in the company of so many representatives of science, art, literature, and commerce—men whose object it is to promote in this country the blessings of civilization, in which they have the hearty concurrence of their fellow-labourers in the same good work in France. Let us persevere, gentlemen, in that noble emulation which now subsists between the two countries. Humanity has nothing to fear from this peaceful contest. (Cheers). After having mingled our blood in two glorious wars, in which our soldiers fought side by side, it can never be that we will turn against each other those improved weapons and those powerful engines of war which we owe to the men of science of both countries. (Loud cheers.) I find at the present moment two guarantees for the continuance of peace. One is the Treaty of Commerce, which will render the connexion between the two nations more intimate and more enduring from day to day, and in a generous co-operation to give it fall effect we shall each illus- trate still more the glorious reign of your gracious Queen and my Sovereign_ ( Cheers.) Another ground for believing in the continuance of peace is that Universal Exhibition which is preparing in London for next year. We in France
have eagerly accepted an invitation which has been offered to us, and we shall contribute as much as we can to its success. Such a great display of the results of human intelligence and industry cannot but conduce to the promotion of trade and commerce, which are the surest guarantees for the maintenance of peace." (Cheers.)
The " gorilla book" has given rise to a keen controversy, in which Mr. Gray, of the British Museum, has appeared alone against Mr. du Chaillu, Professor Owen, and Sir Roderick Murchison. At the annual meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, on Monday, the subject came up, after Sir Roderick, acting for Lord Ashburton, had presented the Founder's Medal to Earl de Grey for Captain Speke, of African renown, and the Patron's Gold Medal to the Duke of New- castle for Mr. M'Douall Stuart, the Australian explorer. Both Lord de Grey and the Colonial Secretary made brief speeches. Then Sir Roderick Murchison, having mourned in fitting language for the loss the society had sustained by the death of the travelled Thane Athenian Aberdeen," spoke of Mr. du Chaffin : Passing on, among other topics, to the exploration of Mr. du Chaillu in Western Equatorial Africa and the "gorilla" district, Sir Roderick proceeded to say,—Among the great desiderata which remained to be worked out in South Africa; one of striking interest, which was alluded to at our last anniversary, has been answered by Mr. do Chaillu, a Frenchntan by birth and education, and now a naturalized citizen of New York. We have since had an opportunity of hear- ing from the traveller himself an account of his strange experience, of seeing his collection of huge anthropoid apes, quadrupeds, reptilia, and numerous birds, and of reading a detailed narrative of his eventful wanderings. Livingstone was the first to reveal to us the great and important fact that the region of Central Africa, extending northwards from the Cape colony to 8 deg. of south latitude, is a plateau—land occupied by great lakes, the waters of which, as previously suggested by myself, would be found to escape to the sea through gorges in sub- tending mountain chains of greater altitude than the central watery plains. Du Chaillu, on his part, has so extended his adventurous explorations from the western coast north and south of the equator as to describe for the first time the complicated river drainage near the coast, which he lias laid down on a map, and also to demonstrate that a lofty wooded chain extends so far into the heart of the continent as apparently to form a band of separation between Northern and Southern Africa. In many a tract to the north of this lofty zone Maho- medanism has extended its sway; but to the south of it, in these meridians,. no green flag of the Prophet has yet been unfurled, while a few zealous missionaries, living on the coasts under the equator and on both sides of the month of the river Gaboon have found centres whence to propagate the Gospel of Christ. It was in one of those seats of the missionaries that young Du Chaillu, taken thither by his father, who traded in the products of the country, first learnt the rudi- ments of the native language of the adjacent tribes, and obtained sufficient information to induce him on his return to his adopted home to fit himself out with presents, medicines, and arms, and then to enter upon one of the boldest ventures which man ever undertook. In vain had the missionaries and trading blacks dissuaded him from such an undertaking by depicting to him the savage character of the tribe of men (many of them cannibals) among whom he must trust himself, to say nothing of the ferocity of the quadrupeds and the impene- trable nature of the densely-wooded jungles and forests he would have to traverse. An intense love of natural history led him to plunge into these hitherto unex- plored wilds. The giant anthropoid ape gorilla, specimens of which bad a few years only been for the first time brought to Europe by traders on the coast, was known to flourish in all his pristine vigour in the interior, and many a curious quadruped and bird were described as being common to that region. The die was, therefore, resolutely cast by the young naturalist, and, with a few black carriers and canoes, and without one white attendant, he dashed into thickets where no European had ever put his foot. Gaining the good-will of chief after chief, and being at length considered by their sable majesties as a white spirit whose wrath might be fatal to them, and whom they therefore propitiated, he has been enabled, not merely to describe the singular habits of these people, but also to make a sketch map of the region, and to define the course of the chief rivers, both before and after they unite in a network of streams as they approach the coast. Whereat the extreme eastern point of his tour, the information he derived from the natives led him to believe that the rocky and densely .wooded mountains really extended for so great a distance to the east that they might be very well supposed to send out embranchments into those highlands north of the Uniayembe Lake of Barton and Speke, which these authors called the Mountains of the Moon. Including periods of return to his friends the missionaries on the coast, and his voyages to and fro, he occupied nearly four years in these arduous explorations, and got together a greater quantity of apes, quadrupeds, and birds (many of them never before seen) than probably ever fell to the lot of any one traveller. It is not our province here to estimate the relative value of these animals, but we know that, in the opinion of some of the first zoologists of Europe and America, Mr. du. Chain has not only added greatly to their pre- existing acquaintance with the fauna of South Africa, but has, by his clear and animated descriptions, convinced them that he has been as close an eye.witness of the habits of the gorilla and his associates as he proved himself to be their successful assailant. Strikingly attractive and wonderful as were his descriptions, they all carry in themselves an impress of substantial truthfulness. Of this no one who has formed the acquaintance of Mr. du Chaillu, and looked into his open countenance and met his bright and piercing eye, can for a moment doubt.
At the dinner in the evening, Professor Owen testified to a si- milar purport, in proposing Mr. du Chaillu's health. He said:
Though we previously had, he said, in England the skin of a young male gorilla,
Though du Chaillu had for the first time brought skins of full-grown male and full-grown female animals of different ages, with skulls and skeletons—the amplest, rarest, and most interesting illustrations of the lower creation that had ever reached Europe. Besides that, he had brought illustrations of at least two well marked varieties of the chimpanzee.' The condition of those skins showed that they had been preserved by means of arsenical preparations, such as an able, practised collector of rare animals would know how to use, and differing in that respect from the skins that were dried and brought from the interior by negroes. They indicated, in fact, that they had been prepared at the places where the animals were stated to have been killed. Then Mr. do Chaffin had added con- siderably, and in very important respects, to our knowledge of the habits of those animals, and his statements clearly showed that they were based on direct and actual observation. When they were tested by what we previously knew of the gorilla, for example, they were found exactly to accord with inferences published previously to the appearance of Mr. (In Chaffin's book. We could not judge of the extent of a man's travels by the number of new species with which he re- turned. It would be very unjust to estimate the dangers and privations ex- perienced by a traveller by such a test, inasmuch as a country like Tasmania, for instance, or New Zealand, having a climate like our own, would furnish him with almost as many new species as skins he might bring home; • whereas, the conditions of life on the west coast of tropical Africa were, on the whole, so similar, that the animals through a considerable range of that coast did not differ much in species. That arose from the law of geographical distribution. Animals and birds were described in scientific journals in America as new species that had never been disproved to be so. He believed that Mr. du Chaillu had brought horns new skins that were bond )fde new; and they were sent over to America sad described in their scientific journals as new. Then, if he bad not brought home new species, he had brought new illustrations of the most important and singular species, besides illustrations of at least two distinct varieties of the chimpanzee ; and whether one judged of Mr. du. Chaillu by personal intercourse, by his material evidences, by what he appeared to have seen of the living habits of the animals he described—testing those accounts by what we know of their stricture—or by the incidents and style of his narrative, he impresses one with the conviction that he was a truthful and spirited man of honour and a
gentleman.
Mr. du Chaillu answered in a brief and modest peech, thanking those who had come forward to vindicate his character. He was going to write to the missionaries whom hu had mentioned in his book. They knew from the natives, and partly of their own know- ledge, that he had gone through the country he had described, and many of those natives would remember him perfectly well. He had not the slightest fear that the truth would right itself in the end. He was only a boy, and the more he came in contact with great men in this and other countries, the more he was convinced that they would not see him crushed.
The Royal Society of Dublin, with commendable spirit, has or- ganized an Art Exhibition, and yesterday week it was opened with all due pomp by Lord Carlisle. The collection has been arranged in the Agricultural Hall, which consists of a central nave, with a saloon on either hand. Here are illustrations of ancient and modern art, paintings, sculpture, bronzes, and objects showing the skill in manufacture and the connexion between manufacture and art. The spectacle at the opening is described as havino. been " pleasing and impressive" by the reporter, and as "rich and glowing" hy Lord Carlisle, who, in his speech, half promised the delighted audience that during his "auspicious residence" in Ireland the Prince of Wales will be found among the visitors.
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