THE MONKE Y FAMIL Y, 147 



Then, again, there has been a general and a great mistake on the 

 part of those who have written on monkeys that is, those writers 

 have seldom or ever studied their habits in the localities in which 

 nature has commanded them to move. This blunder has placed the 

 whole family in anything but the real and necessary point of view. 

 Thus, in our own events, when the sun was believed to roll round 

 the earth, and rise every morning resets sol surgit ab undis, and 

 go to bed regularly every night occiduis absconditur undis, the 

 whole world was under a pleasing delusion. Still everything went 

 wrong in the planetary system. At last, in a lucky hour, the sun was 

 proved to stand still, and then an immediate change took place. 

 Away went all the poet's fictions man saw his error, and he rectified 

 it ; and he found, for the first time, that the earth and all the heavenly 

 bodies perform their revolutions in perfect harmony and in proper 

 time. Might I be here allowed to compare small things with great 

 ones, I would say that, up to the present time, the monkey has been 

 placed in the same false position that the sun formerly maintained ; 

 and I would express a hope that, when I shall have clearly pointed 

 out the error, my readers will have no hesitation in conceding to 

 this interesting animal the real sphere of action which nature has 

 allotted to it, and that they will allow it (as we now allow the sun) to 

 act its proper and legitimate part in the vast drama of the creation. 

 In a word, I will remove the whole family of monkeys from the 

 ground to the trees. There, and there alone, ought we to contem- 

 plate the nature, and the movements, and the entire economy of the 

 monkey. 



For many years during my boyhood I myself had very erroneous 

 ideas of the sloth, having read his history in the works of one of the 

 most talented and indefatigable naturalists the world has ever pro- 

 duced. He describes the sloth as " a miserable and degraded pro- 

 duction of nature, occupying the lowest degree in the scale of quad- 

 rupeds." But a sojourn of eleven months in the forests of Guiana, 

 without having emerged from -them for even a single day, afforded 

 me the finest opportunity imaginable of contemplating the sloth in 

 its native haunts. I soon changed my opinion of its habits, and I 

 placed in the " Wanderings " all that I had observed of them. The 

 public doubted the accuracy of my observations. Years, however, 



