1920, at 15 Sloane Street, London, by Major Rupert Penny, of the
Royal Air Service, and his young relative, Miss Alyse Cunningham.
Prior to that time, through various combinations of retarding
circumstances, no living gorilla had ever been placed and kept in
an environment calculated to develop and display the real mental
calibre of the gorilla mind. It seems that an exhibition cage, in
a zoological park or garden thronged with visitors, actually tends
to the suppression, or even the complete extinguishment, of true
gorilla character. The atmosphere of the footlights and the stage
in which the chimpanzee delights and thrives is to the gorilla
repulsive and unbearable.

Judging by Major Penny's "John," the gorilla wishes to live in a
high-class human family, in a modern house, and be treated like a
human being! It is now definitely recognized by us, and also by
our colleagues in the London Zoological Gardens, that gorillas can
not live long and thrive on public exhibition, before great crowds
of people, and that it is folly to insist upon trying to compel
them to do so. The male individual that lived several years in the
Breslau Zoological Garden and attained the age of seven years was
a striking exception.

We have had two gorillas at our Park, one of which, a female named
Dinah, arrived in good health, and lived with us eleven and one-
half months. Her mind was dull and hopelessly unresponsive. She
learned next to nothing, and she did nothing really interesting.
Other captive gorillas I have known have been equally morose and
unresponsive, and lived fewer months than Dinah.

It is because of such animals as Dinah that for fifty years the