Yet the monkeys do not stand alone in this

Footnote 151. The Magot, Macacusinuus.

grasping power, for we have seen that the opossums have hind-thumbs among the pouch-bearers, while among the rodents the little dormouse has a nailless grasping toe-thumb on his hind feet. So that here already we have some clue to possible descendants of poor relations of the monkeys down in the lower forms of life; and when we remember that the colugo (see p. 232) is related on the one hand to marsupials and insect-eaters, while on the other it leans towards the lemurs, and through them to the monkeys, we begin to suspect that somewhere low down in all these groups we might find ourselves among a family party from which all the different branches have sprung; just as we found the birds, reptiles, and milk-givers starting in past ages among the amphibia.

It must, however, be very long ago since the monkeys scrambled to the top of this family tree, for even the Lemurs,—which are not true monkeys, but a lower type with an irregular number of teeth like the insect-eaters, hairy hands and fox-like faces, without any change of expression,—have well-developed thumbs and toe-thumbs, with nails on hands and feet, and they have besides that free movement of the arm and wrist which gives at once an advantage to the Quadrumana[152] or four-handed animals.

These lemurs are a gentle and loving race of

Footnote 152. Naturalists now class monkeys under the order “Primates” (or highest forms), together with man, and they have given up the term Quadrumana, or four-handed, because, although the feet grasp like hands, they are true feet. Nevertheless, this term is very useful; and, if properly understood, expresses the grasping power of the four feet characteristic of the group.

creatures, which run on all fours like cats, and have none of the mischievous half-reasoning pranks of monkeys. They must have crept down long long ago from the great battlefield of Europe and Asia, and taken refuge in the forests of South Africa and India, and especially in the Island of Madagascar, where they were sheltered from the attacks of larger and fiercer animals. They are splendid climbers, with very sensitive tips to their fingers, which are often of different lengths, and many of them have eyes with pupils which expand and contract like those of a cat, enabling them to see well by day and night, while a quick sense of hearing warns them of any danger near.

In India, indeed, their relations the “Lories” are most of them slow-moving night-loving animals, while in South Africa the “Galagos” sleep all day in a nest of leaves, and are only active at night, crying to each other as they leap from bough to bough, seizing the beetles and moths in their little hands. It was probably from such night-wanderers as these that the general name of “lemurs” or “ghost-like” animals was given to the group, for the true lemurs, which live in Madagascar,—their special home, where they have few enemies,—may be seen by day running along the branches, snatching the fruit, sucking birds’ eggs, and even feeding on the young birds themselves, for they have plenty of crushing teeth, as well as incisors for clipping the leaves. Sometimes they sit in companies, huddled together, wrapping their soft furry tails round each other’s necks, for they are chilly creatures, and even in that warm country their thick tails, which are quite useless for clinging, seem to be a comfort to them. More often they are running and jumping, especially in the evening time, the mothers carrying their naked little ones nestled in the fur of their stomach, or, when they are older, on their backs; and whether slow or quick, day-lovers or night-hunters, these happy thoughtless little beings flourish in the quiet island home they have found, cut off from the struggling world beyond.

Fig. 64.

The Aye-Aye and a Lemur in the forests of Madagascar.

And among them at night, when the soft clear moonlight shines down on the thick forests in the

interior of the island, comes a small ghost-like animal, the “Aye-Aye,” with wide-staring eyes, furry body, and long bony jointed fingers. He utters a plaintive cry as he creeps from bough to bough, stripping the bark off the trees with his strong chisel-like teeth to find some worm-eaten hole into which he thrusts his skinny fourth finger to pick out a grub, and then moistens his meal by drawing the same long finger rapidly through some watery crevice, and then through his lips for drink. This strange creature too is a kind of lemur, so far as he can be classed at all, with his gnawing teeth, his hind feet like a monkey’s, his large spoon-shaped ears, and his uneven fingered hands, with strong curved claws. At any rate he belongs to no other group, but tells us once more the old story of creatures in isolated countries putting on strange shapes suited to extreme habits of life.

Now between these gentle, but low-brained and dreamy lemurs, and the active, intelligent, mischievous monkeys, there is a great gap. The creatures most like them are the little Marmosets of South America, which run like squirrels among the forest trees of Brazil, feeding on bananas, spiders, and grasshoppers, and making their nests in the topmost boughs. But these marmosets are true monkeys, with expressive faces, and the peculiar wide-spread nostrils which we find in all the monkeys of the New World. For it is to South America, that land of the less advanced forms of life, that we must look for the lower kind of quadrumana, with side-opening nostrils,[153] thumbs which move in a line with the

Footnote 153. Platyrrhine monkeys, from Platus broad, rhines nostrils.

fingers of the hand, and not nearly so much across the palm as in the higher apes, and thirty-six teeth in their mouth instead of thirty-two,[154] as in man and in the Old World monkeys.

None of these American monkeys ever become so man-like as the Apes of Africa and Asia, but in many ways they bring monkey-life in the trees to greater perfection, in the dense forests of Brazil and Paraguay, and even as far north as Guatemala. The lumbering heavy Gorilla of Africa, though higher in the scale, is a cumbersome fellow compared to the nimble little thumbless Spider monkeys of the Amazons, which hang by their bare tipped tails to the branches and to each other, chattering away like a troop of children as they gather the bananas and other fruits, or catch insects and young birds, or fly screaming with fear from the stealthy puma or the fierce eagle. With the trees for their kingdom, their tail for a fifth hand, and the warm sun to cheer and invigorate them, these spider-monkeys and their quieter friends the Capucine monkeys (often seen on London organs), and the Woolly monkeys (Fig. 65), lead a pleasant life enough, till misfortune or old age overtakes them. Their friends the Howler monkeys, which also have grasping tails, seek the deep recesses of the forest and creep quietly from tree to tree until night comes, when hundreds of them at once will make the woods re-echo with their deep howling cry, which they produce by a special voice-organ in their throat; and with them come out the little Owl monkeys, which sleep by day in the hollows

Footnote 154. Except the marmosets, which have a peculiar dentition of their own.

of the trees. These, with the various kinds of Saki monkeys, which cannot cling by their tails, but have fairly good brains and quick intelligence, make up the monkey population of America.

Fig. 65.

A Woolly Monkey and child (Lagothryx Humboldtii), showing grasping tail. (Proc. Zool. Soc.)

Here, then, we have a whole group of quickwitted tree-monkeys, which, from their structure, we

know must have started long ago on a line of their own, wandering down into South America, where they had but few enemies except the boas and pumas and birds of prey, till man came to kill and eat them. And if we wonder how they have gained their quick mischievous intelligence in those quiet pathless forests, we must remember that though a grasping hand and foot seem at first sight of very little importance, yet by means of them the monkey moves rapidly from place to place, swinging, leaping, running, and climbing along the boughs, which are its paths from tree to tree. And since rapid change of any kind makes the eye quick of sight, the ear acute, and the brain active and alive to take in new impressions, it is no wonder that the monkey mind has become alert and ready during the ages that these animals have been chasing and cheating and outwitting each other, or tenderly rearing their young ones among the dangers of the forest.

And now if we turn back to the Old World, it is not so much the smaller active tree-monkeys that interest us, for they live much the same life as their American cousins, although they differ from them in never having grasping tails, in having thirty-two teeth like man, in the openings of their nostrils which turn downwards[155] like our own, and in having either cheek-pouches to stow away their food, or stomachs with three compartments like animals that chew the cud, so that they can keep a store within. But in spite of these differences they appear outwardly much the same as the American monkeys; they leap and jump among the trees, and it is not till we come to

Footnote 155. Catarrhine monkeys; kata downward, rhines nostrils.

the Baboons and the tailless man-like apes, that we find ourselves studying quite another kind of life.

Imagine an undulating country of corn-fields and rough vegetation in Abyssinia, or southwards towards the Cape, with long ranges of rocky hills rising up behind, and precipices leading to the narrow defiles of the mountains, and then picture to yourself, descending from those mountains, a troop of two hundred or more large hairy monkeys, with short tails growing from between bare seat-pads, dog-like faces and something of a dog’s shape, as they gallop clumsily along with all four feet flat upon the ground. These are the African Baboons, and they form a goodly company, the chiefs marching first, grand old elders with stout hairy manes to protect them when fighting. These come cautiously, peering over the precipices, and climbing up rocks and stones to survey the country round before allowing the troop to advance; and behind them follow the young males, and the mothers with their children on their backs, shambling down till they reach the fertile grounds, where sentinels are set to watch for danger, while the multitude feed, filling their cheek-pouches and even storing the corn under their armpits. Then when all are satisfied, if no alarm has been given they wander slowly back, resting by the way to chew their food or drink at some mountain stream, but never leaving the company till they are safe back under the rocky ledges of the steep hillside, where they make their home.[156]

For these baboons, unlike other monkeys, live in hilly rocky places, and not in forests, and therefore

Footnote 156. See Parkyns’ Life in Abyssinia.

they are in much more danger from wild beasts, especially the leopard, so that they rarely venture abroad except in company, and lead an extremely gregarious life. Yet though they run on all fours, and look less human than most monkeys, even the lowest baboon, the Mandrill (easily known by the coloured swellings on its cheeks and hind quarters), which has many points in its skeleton like four-footed animals, has true thumbs on its hands and toe-thumbs on its feet, and uses them to lift up stones to search for scorpions and other insects; while the mother baboons dandle their little ones, or give them a box on the ear when troublesome, in true human fashion.

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