THE MONKE Y FA MIL Y. 151 



genealogical tree of the monkey family ; and after having lopped off 

 its diseased or useless branches, I will ingraft in their stead others 

 which, I trust, will bear fruit of a better quality, and be more agree- 

 able to the reader's palate, than the bastard fruit which they have 

 hitherto been accustomed to eat. 



Whatever books we open, which treat on the habits of the monkey, 

 we are sure to find stories upon which no manner of reliance ought 

 to be placed ; and it is humiliating for the cause of natural history, 

 to see how such absurd tales still continue to find their way into 

 editions of the present times, where the schoolmaster is supposed to 

 carry all before him. 



An immortal engraver on wood* (and faultless, had he attended 

 solely to his own profession), having never seen monkeys in their 

 native regions, has taken his account of them from the pages of 

 other writers. In the frontispiece to his book, he gives us an 

 unfaithful portrait of the large orang-outang sitting on a bench, with 

 a cane in its hand, and supporting its arm on it. Uncomfortable 

 position for the captive brute ! We might easily mistake it for s. 

 man, both in form and in position. He tells us that the " largest of 

 the kind are extremely swift." Swift, forsooth ! I should like to 

 talk with any European traveller, or with any native of the regions 

 in which orang-outangs are found, who will positively assert that 

 they have ever detected one of those apes, either young or old, in 

 flight, or in a journey, on the ground. I would prove the assertion 

 to be a fabrication by the anatomy of the animal itself. Our author 

 continues, that " they drive away the elephants who approach too 

 near the place of their residence." What, in the name of bullying, 

 I ask, has the orang-outang to do with the elephant in the way of 

 residence 1 Wild animals, in boundless space, do not quarrel with 

 others of a different species, except for food ; and then, the strongest 

 soon destroy the weakest, or make them retire elsewhere. Thus, we 

 may easily conceive that a stiff buck goat might so far forget good 

 breeding as to pounce upon a tender lamb, and seize the savoury 

 plant upon which the lamb was feeding. Now the ordinary pursuits, 

 and also the food and the territory of the ape and the elephant, are 



* Bewick. The Duke of Northumberland had presented Mr Waterton with a 

 splendid copy of the Birds and Beasts of Bewick. [ED.] 



