144 THE MONKE Y FA MIL Y. 



say nothing of our modern adepts in zoology, whose herculean 

 labours have enkindled such a galaxy of light in every department 

 of natural history; and have shown to the world what study, what 

 investigation, and what talents can effect when properly directed ? 

 Are all these champions in error, when treating of the monkey 

 family? To this, I answer, have a little patience, courteous reader, 

 everything shall be explained. In the course of this treatise, I will 

 do my best to remove from my old grandmother's nurseries, ac- 

 counts of the monkey family which deserve a better place j allowing 

 at the same time a multitude of absurdities to remain there, as 

 mental food for little children. 



Before I proceed to examine minutely the movements and the 

 haunts of the monkey tribe in a state of pristine freedom, and to 

 place every individual of it in an entirely new point of view before 

 my readers, I would fain draw their attention to an ape found 

 in Gibraltar. It is called magot by French naturalists, and is an 

 exception to the general rule, on account of its peculiar locality. 

 Portentous circumstances, in some very remote period quite un- 

 known to us, may possibly have placed this insignificant portion ot 

 the widely extending family in its present ambiguous position. Or 

 perhaps, even man himself, the everlasting interferer with the brute 

 creation, may, in the ardour of a whim, have conveyed a few African 

 apes to the Rock of Gibraltar, and left them there to propagate their 

 kind. If so, the existence of apes on this stupendous fortress may 

 safely be accounted for without any particular stretch of imagination 

 on our part. But I believe there is nothing on record to show that 

 this establishment of an apish colony had ever taken place. Still, 

 curiosity is often on the alert to discover, how this ape found its way 

 to the Rock of Gibraltar, and by what means it has managed to pro- 

 tect and support itself in a locality so devoid of forest, and so exposed 

 to the rush of commerce and the roar of cannon. It is an ape in 

 form and feature, possessing the same powers of mimicry, so noto- 

 rious throughout the whole family of the monkey ; nor is there any- 

 thing observable in its nature to warrant a suspicion that it would 

 deviate from the habits of its congeners were it placed, like them, 

 in the unbounded regions of freedom and repose. At present the 

 iipe of Gibraltar is a prisoner at large, just as far as the Rock ex- 



