MONKEYS. 23 



walk usually on all-fours ; but in 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 four- 

 handed 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 climb- 

 ing ; and, being adapted to this double purpose, the hands want the 

 delicacy of touch and the freedom as well as the precision of move- 

 ment which ours possess. Man alone is so constructed that he walks 

 erect wUh 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. 



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, monk- 

 eys, and baboons ; but these do not include the American monkeys, 

 which are really more different from all those of the Old World than 

 any of the latter are from each other. Naturalists, therefore, divide 

 the whole monkey-tribe into two great families, inhabiting the Old 

 and the New Worlds respectively ; and, if we learn to remember the 

 kind of differences by which these several groups are distinguished, 

 we shall be able to understand something of the classification of ani- 

 mals, and the difference between important and unimportant characters. 



Taking first the Old World groups, they may be thus defined : 

 apes have no tails ; monkeys have tails, which are usually long ; while 

 baboons have short tails, and their faces, instead of being round and 

 with a man-like expression as in apes and monkeys, are long and more 

 dog-like. These differences are, however, by no means constant, and 

 it is often difficult to tell whether an animal should be classed as an 

 ape, a monkey, or a baboon. The Gibraltar ape, for example, though 

 it has no tail, is really a monkey, because it has callosities, or hard 

 pads of bare skin on which it sits, and cheek-pouches in which it can 

 stow away food ; the latter character being always absent in the true 

 apes, while both. are present in most monkeys and baboons. All these 

 animals, however, from the largest ape to the smallest 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. 



