His theories and findings have been superseded by more recent research, but his work has been an inspiration to such notable scientists as Robert Yerkes and John Peabody Harrington.

"[3] He acquired one of Thomas Edison's early phonographs and began to spend time observing and recording monkeys at zoos in Cincinnati, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

[4] Garner next raised funds for a trip to study chimpanzees in Gabon; among his donors were such prominent figures as Edison, Alexander Melville Bell, and Grover Cleveland.

[6] Early on, publications that did not reject evolutionary theory outright tended to accept Garner's various claims about chimpanzees — that he could communicate with them in their language, that he had taught them English words, that within a few generations they would be entirely literate — but in later years more skeptical and even satirical articles began to appear.

[3] As the primatologist Robert Yerkes later wrote: "The writer humbly confesses that the more he learns about the great apes and lesser primates by direct observation as contrasted with reading, the more facts and valuable suggestions he discovers in Garner's writings.