The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-18
SCULPTOR BACKS
 DARWIN THEORY
Carl Akely Associates Gorilla With Man In Carved
 Piece

NEW YORK, Feb. 17.-Art, which entered the religious dispute between the fundamentalists and the modernists when the Rev. Dr. William Norman Guthrie introduced bare-legged dancers into the vestry program of the church of St. Marks on the Bouwerie, threat ems to assume an even more important place in the fracas.
 In the studio of Carl Akely, noted sculptor and big game hunter, art is girding herself for her part. There, Akely, surrounded by the stuffed goril- las of the Museum of Natural History, has produced a sculptured piece which associates the gorilla was mankind and symbolizes the hairy beginnings, from whence, Akely believes, the lattei sprang. It is, in the belief of such chos. en few as have seen in, most eloquent argument for the evolutionists.
 Akely, who probably knows more about gorillas than any one else, with the exception of the native beasts of the jungle, who play tag with the giant apes or else flee in terror at their ap proach, doesn't think that the ancestry of the average 100 per cent American could possibly be traced straight back to them, but insists that they're prod ucts of the same family tree.
 Sculptures Family of Apes
 The work he is now engaged in pre- sents a family of the big animals mother, father and baby gorilla. All three look quite peaceful in the statue which could easily stand a God Bless Our-Happy Home" sample at the base.
 Akely has killed quite a few gorillas in the interests of science, but he re vealed a warm affection for them ir an interview Saturday, claiming that the tribe had been grossly maligned.
 The gorilla is not naturally ferocious he insists, and ranks, indisputably, next to man in point of intelligence.
 Facial and psychological resemblance of three of the gorillas, killed on one ridge of the mountains, and a similar resemblance between the two others which were shot on another ridge, he said, suggest that they live in family groups and interbreed.
 Separate Like Humans
 'Is there any probability that they mate for long periods?"
 ''.No, they're too nearly human for that" he answered, smiling.
 If they do, we have descended and not ascended, for the court records show that we are inclined to scatter our affections rather than to remain true to single mate. To believe that they mate for life would be to endow them with attainments we have not reached. That would be expecting too much. of a gorilla. They do greatly re- semble man physically, however"
 s"Gorillas are not the ferocious, man. eating beasts people think they are. They are perfectly docile and decent animals, that would be willing to asso- ciate with us if we were as decent as they are. Look at those faces. They are formed from death masks, which caught the expression of the animals in their natural state. Motion pictures show them the same, not as wild, violent monsters, but as mild, gentle, even timid beings.
 "The popular misconception of the gorilla comes from two causes, the first is that taxidermists, in mounting the animals, try to make them as inhuman and horrible as possible. The second is that accounts in books by persons who have hunted them were exaggerat- ed to provide a thrill to make the book sell Publishers have been known to refuse manuscripts until the thrills were infected by changing the gorilla S acts"