1 54 THE MONKE Y FA MIL Y. 



of this anon. The prerogative must not be conceded to the monkey 

 family, however highly we may estimate its powers of mimicry. 



One quotation more from our immortal engraver on wood, and then 

 I will shut his valuable book, wishing sincerely, for the good oi 

 zoology, that he had confined himself solely to the engraving depart- 

 ment of it, in lieu of consulting writers whose judgments seem never 

 to have been sufficiently matured to enable them to distinguish 

 truth 'from fiction. Hence, with the very best intentions, they are 

 perpetually going astray, by too often mistaking for real flame the 

 fallacious exhalations of " Will o' the Wisp," as they hover over the 

 treacherous surface of a distant quagmire. He informs his readers, 

 in the volume of quadrupeds, that " monkeys break off branches, 

 throw them at the passengers, and frequently with so sure an aim as 

 to annoy them not a little." This is said of the pata or red monkey, 

 perhaps the most wary of all the family, and ever on the alert to 

 escape when man approaches. But, granting for a moment that 

 monkeys have the power to throw sticks, let me ask, how did the 

 patas contrive to take a sure aim amongst the woven and intervening 

 branches of a tropical forest ? The question is easily answered. 

 This monkey, by its natural shyness and fear of danger, has never 

 had time nor opportunity to fling a stick with sure aim at the head 

 of any traveller. 



The traveller who first invented this idle story, of monkeys throwing 

 branches at passengers, must have been a wag of the first order and 

 of most inventive intellect. The art of throwing projectiles has not 

 been given to the brute creation; man alone man, a rational being 

 possesses the qualification. Monkeys know nothing at all of the 

 combined act of moving an elevated arm backwards, and then, whilst 

 bringing it forwards, to open the hand just at that particular time 

 when the arm can impart motion to the thing which the hand had 

 grasped. Thus man, at a distance from you, can aim a stone at 

 your head, and break your skull. The monkey can do no such 

 thing. It will certainly take up a stone or a stick ; but that is all, 

 as far as aggression is concerned. The stone or the stick, in lieu of 

 flying off from the monkey's hand, would drop perpendicular to 

 the ground, like Corporal Trim's hat, when the serious soldier was 

 making reflections on death before the servants in Captain Shandy's 



