There was no dark in all her life; her bliss
Was fully bliss, and where her home she
made

No shadow fell; for, like the sun in this,
Her brightness could not bear to look on
shade.

Bright flowers and brave! the wind hath blown Our hearts turned to her, as till day be gone

From The Contemporary Review.

MONKEYS.

with a pen. A monkey does not take hold of a nut with its forefinger and thumb as we do, but grasps it between the fingers and the palm in a clumsy way, just as a baby does before it has acquired the proper use of its hand. Two groups of monkeys-one in Africa and one in South America - have no thumbs on their hands, and yet they do not seem to be in any respect inferior to other kinds which possess it. In most of the American monkeys the thumb bends in the same direction as the fingers, and in none is it so perfectly opposed to the fingers as our thumbs are; and all these circumstances show that the hand of the monkey is, both structurally and functionally, a very different and very inferior organ to that of man, since it is not applied to similar purposes, nor is it capable of being so applied.

used in taking hold of anything. The monkey's hand is, therefore, not so well IF the skeletons of an orang-utan and adapted as that of man for a variety of a chimpanzee be compared with that of a purposes, and cannot be applied with such man, there will be found the most wonder-precision in holding small objects, while it ful resemblance, together with a very is unsuitable for performing delicate opermarked diversity. Bone for bone, through- ations such as tying a knot or writing out the whole structure, will be found to agree in general form, position, and function, the only absolute differences being that the orang has nine wrist bones, whereas man and the chimpanzee have but eight; and the chimpanzee has thirteen pairs of ribs, whereas the orang, like man, has but twelve. With these two exceptions, the differences are those of shape, proportion, and direction only, though the resulting differences in the external form and motions are very considerable. The greatest of these are, that the feet of the anthropoid or man-like apes, as well as those of all monkeys, are formed like hands, with large opposable thumbs fitted to grasp the branches of trees but unsuitable for erect walking, while the hands have weak, small thumbs but very long and powerful fingers, forming a hook rather than a hand, adapted for climbing up trees and suspending the whole weight from horizontal branches. The almost complete identity of the skeleton, however, and the close similarity of the muscles and of all the internal organs, have produced that striking and ludicrous resemblance to man which every one recognizes in these higher apes and, in a less degree, in the whole monkey tribe; the face and features, the motions, attitudes, and gestures being often a strange caricature of humanity. Let us, then, examine a little more closely in what the resem blance consists, and how far, and to what extent, these animals really differ from

When we look at the feet of monkeys we find a still greater difference, for these have much larger and more opposable thumbs and are therefore more like our hands; and this is the case with all monkeys, so that even those which have no thumbs on their hands, or have them small and weak and parallel to the fingers, have always large and well-formed thumbs on their feet. It was on account of this peculiarity that the great French naturalist Cuvier named the whole group of monkeys Quadrumana, or four-handed animals, because, besides the two hands on their fore limbs, they have also two hands in place of feet on their hind limbs. Modern naturalists have given up the use of this term, because they say that the hind extremities of all monkeys are really feet, only these feet are shaped like hands; but this is a point of anatomy, or rather of nomenclature, which we need not here discuss.

Let us, however, before going further, inquire into the purpose and use of this peculiarity, and we shall then see that it is simply an adaptation to the mode of life of

these the arms are so long and the legs so short that the body appears half erect when walking; and they have the habit of resting on the knuckles of the hands, not on the palms like the smaller monkeys, whose arms and legs are more nearly of an equal length, which tends still further to give them a semi-erect position. Still, they are never known to walk of their own accord on their hind legs only, though they can do so for short distances, and the story of their using a stick and walking erect by its help in the wild state is not true. Monkeys, then, are both fourhanded and four-footed beasts; they possess four hands formed very much like our hands, and capable of picking up or holding any small object in the same manner; but they are also four-footed, because they use all four limbs for the purpose of walking, running, or climbing; and, being adapted to this double purpose, the hands want the delicacy of touch and the freedom as well as the precision of movement which ours possess. Man alone is so constructed that he walks erect with perfect ease, and has his hands free for any use to which he wishes to apply them; and this is the great and essential bodily distinction between monkeys and men.

the animals which possess it. Monkeys, - also walk usually on all-fours; but in as a rule, live in trees, and are especially abundant in the great tropical forests. They feed chiefly upon fruits, and occasionally eat insects and birds' eggs, as well as young birds, all of which they find in the trees; and, as they have no occasion to come down to the ground, they travel from tree to tree by jumping or swinging, and thus pass the greater part of their lives entirely among the leafy branches of lofty trees. For such a mode of existence, they require to be able to move with perfect ease upon large or small branches, and to climb up rapidly from one bough to another. As they use their hands for gathering fruit and catching insects or birds, they require some means of holding on with their feet, otherwise they would be liable to continual falls, and they are able to do this by means of their long, finger-like toes and large, opposable thumbs, which grasp a branch almost as securely as a bird grasps its perch. The true hands, on the contrary, are used chiefly to climb with, and to swing the whole weight of the body from one branch or one tree to another, and for this purpose the fingers are very long and strong, and in many species they are further strengthened by being partially joined together, as if the skin of our fingers grew together as far as the knuckles. This shows that the separate action of the fingers, which is so important to us, is little required by monkeys, whose hand is really an organ for climbing and seizing food, while their foot is required to support them firmly in any position on the branches of trees, and for this purpose it has become modified into a large and powerful grasping hand.

We will now give some account of the different kinds of monkeys and the countries they inhabit.

THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF MONKEYS AND

THE COUNTRIES THEY INHABIT.

MONKEYS are usually divided into three kinds apes, monkeys, and baboons; but these do not include the American monkeys, which are really more different Another striking difference between from all those of the Old World than any monkeys and men is that the former never of the latter are from each other. Natuwalk with ease in an erect posture, but ralists, therefore, divide the whole monalways use their arms in climbing or in key tribe into two great families, inhabitwalking on all-fours like most quadrupeds. ing the Old and the New Worlds respectThe monkeys that we see in the streets ively; and, if we learn to remember the dressed up and walking erect, only do so kind of differences by which these sevafter much drilling and teaching, just as eral groups are distinguished, we shall be dogs may be taught to walk in the same able to understand something of the clasway; and the posture is almost as unnatu-sification of animals, and the difference ral to the one animal as it is to the other. between important and unimportant charThe largest and most man-like of the apes acters. the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-utan

-

Taking first the Old World groups, they

may be thus defined: apes have no tails; | finger or palm of the hand and apparently monkeys have tails, which are usually equally sensitive. One of the common long; while baboons have short tails, and kinds of monkeys that accompany street their faces, instead of being round and organ-players has a prehensile tail, but with a man-like expression as in apes and not of the most perfect kind; since in monkeys, are long and more dog-like. this species the tail is entirely clad with These differences are, however, by no hair to the tip, and seems to be used means constant, and it is often difficult to chiefly to steady the animal when sitting tell whether an animal should be classed on a branch by being twisted round anas an ape, a monkey, or a baboon. The other branch near it. The statement is Gibraltar ape, for example, though it has often erroneously made that all American no tail, is really a monkey, because it has monkeys have prehensile tails; but the callosities, or hard pads of bare skin on fact is that rather less than half the known which it sits, and cheek-pouches in which kinds have them so, the remainder having it can stow away food; the latter charac- this organ either short and bushy or long ter being always absent in the true apes, and slender, but entirely without any while both are present in most monkeys power of grasping. All prehensile-tailed and baboons. All these animals, how monkeys are American, but all American ever, from the largest ape to the smallest monkeys are not prehensile-tailed. monkey, have the same number of teeth as we have, and they are arranged in a similar manner, although the tusks, or canine teeth, of the males are often large, like those of a dog.

The American monkeys, on the other hand, with the exception of the marmosets, have four additional grinding teeth (one in each jaw on either side), and none of them have callosities, or cheek-pouches. They never have prominent snouts like the baboons; their nostrils are placed wide apart and open sideways on the face; the tail, though sometimes short, is never quite absent; and the thumb bends the same way as the fingers, is generally very short and weak, and is often quite wanting. We thus see that these American monkeys differ in a great number of characters from those of the eastern hemisphere; and they have this further peculiarity, that many of them have prehensile or grasping tails, which are never found in the monkeys of any other country. This curious organ serves the purpose of a fifth hand. It has so much muscular power that the animal can hang by it easily with the tip curled round a branch, while it can also be used to pick up small objects with almost as much ease and exactness as an elephant's trunk. In those species which have it most perfectly formed it is very long and powerful, and the end has the under side covered with bare skin, exactly resembling that of the

By remembering these characters it is easy, with a little observation, to tell whether any strange monkey comes from America, or from the Old World. If it has bare seat-pads, or if when eating it fills its mouth till its cheeks swell out like little bags, we may be sure it comes from some part of Africa or Asia; while if it can curl up the end of its tail so as to take hold of anything, it is certainly American. As all the tailed monkeys of the Old World have seat-pads (or ischial callosities as they are called in scientific language), and as all the American monkeys have tails, but no seat-pads, this is the most constant external character by which to distinguish them; and having done so we can look for the other peculiarities of the American monkeys, especially the distance apart of the nostrils and their lateral position.

The whole monkey tribe is especially tropical, only a few kinds being found in the warmer parts of the temperate zone. One inhabits the Rock of Gibraltar, and there is one very like it in Japan, and these are the two monkeys which live farthest from the equator. In the tropics they become very abundant and increase in numbers and variety as we approach the equator, where the climate is hot, moist, and equable, and where flowers, fruits, and insects are to be found throughout the year. Africa has about fifty-five dif ferent kinds, Asia and its islands about

sixty, while America has one hundred and | cies was known to the ancients, and it is fourteen, or almost exactly the same as Asia and Africa together. Australia and its islands have no monkeys, nor has the great and luxuriant island of New Guinea, whose magnificent forests seem so well adapted for them. We will now give a short account of the different kinds of monkeys inhabiting each of the tropical continents.

Africa possesses two of the great manlike apes, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, the former being the largest ape known, and the one which, on the whole, perhaps most resembles man, though its countenance is less human than that of the chimpanzee. Both are found in west Africa, near the equator, but they also in-like apes hahit the interior wherever there are great forests; and Dr. Schweinfurth states that the chimpanzee inhabits the country about the sources of the Shari River, in 28° E. long. and 4° N. lat.

The long-tailed monkeys of Africa are very numerous and varied. One group has no cheek-pouches and no thumb on the hand, and many of these have long, soft fur of varied colors. The most numerous group are the guenons, rather small, long-tailed monkeys, very active and lively, and often having their faces curiously marked with white or black, or ornamented with whiskers or other tufts of hair; and they all have large cheekpouches and good-sized thumbs. Many of them are called green monkeys, from the greenish-yellow tint of their fur, and most of them are well-formed, pleasing animals. They are found only in tropical Africa.

often represented in Egyptian sculptures, while mummies of it have been found in the catacombs. The largest and most remarkable of all the baboons is the mandrill of west Africa, whose swollen and hog-like face is ornamented with stripes of vivid blue and scarlet. This animal has a tail scarcely two inches long, while in size and strength it is not much inferior to the gorilla. These large baboons go in bands, and are said to be a match for any other animals in the African forests, and even to attack and drive away the elephants from the districts they inhabit. Turning now to Asia, we have first one of the best known of the large manthe orang-utan, found only in the two large islands, Borneo and Sumatra. The name is Malay, signifying "man of the woods," and it should be pronounced órang-óotan, the accent being on the first syllable of both words. It is a very curious circumstance that, whereas the gorilla and chimpanzee are both black, like the negroes of the same country, the orang-utan is red or reddish-brown, closely resembling the color of the Malays and Dyaks who live in the Bornean forests. Though very large and powerful, it is a harmless creature, feeding on fruit, and never attacking any other animal except in self-defence. A full-grown male orang-utan is rather more than four feet high, but with a body as large as that of a stout man, and with enormously long and powerful arms.

Another group of true apes inhabit Asia and the larger Asiatic islands, and are in some respects the most remarkable The baboons are larger, but less nu- of the whole family. These are the gibmerous. They resemble dogs in the bons, or long-armed apes, which are gengeneral form and the length of the face erally of small size and of a gentle dispoor snout, but they have hands with well-sition, but possessing the most wonderful developed thumbs on both the fore and hind limbs; and this, with something in the expression of the face and their habit of sitting up and using their hands in a very human fashion, at once shows that they belong to the monkey tribe. Many of them are very ugly, and in their wild state they are the fiercest and most dangerous of monkeys. Some have the tail very long, others of medium length, while it is sometimes reduced to a mere stump, and all have large cheek-pouches and bare seat-pads. They are found all over Africa from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope; while one species, called the hamadryas, extends from Abyssinia across the Red Sea into Arabia, and is the only baboon found out of Africa. This spe

agility. In these creatures the arms are as long as the body and legs together, and are so powerful that a gibbon will hang for hours suspended from a branch, or swing to and fro, and then throw itself a great distance through the air. The arms, in fact, completely take the place of the legs for travelling. Instead of jumping from bough to bough and running on the branches, like other apes and monkeys, the gibbons move along while hanging suspended in the air, stretching their arms from bough to bough, and thus going hand over hand as a very active sailor will climb along a rope. The strength of their arms is, however, so prodigious, and their hold so sure, that they often loose one hand before they have caught a bough