THE MONKE Y FA MIL Y. 179 



Thus Sir John Franklin and his brave companions, after enduring 

 more than can well be conceived, sank to the ground, each " a stiffened 

 corse, stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast." Poor 

 noble rovers, lost, alas, for the ends of science ! after all, the benefit 

 of a north-west passage is but a thing of emptiness. Leaving the 

 frozen zones, we enter the two temperate ones, which have, equally 

 with the frozen zones, their millions of creatures both to shelter and 

 to feed. Still, even many of these, in certain localities, are obliged 

 to take their departure in autumn, to reap the benefit of a warmer 

 sun. Our birds of passage so called, although apparently quite at 

 ease amongst us, suddenly leave Europe for six months in the year, 

 wending their way to Asia and to Africa. In a word, the man who 

 spends his time in nature's field will have innumerable facts to show, 

 that food and shelter, as I have already observed, are the two main 

 inducements which instigate animated nature to make its periodical 

 movements, or to remain altogether in one locality, should food and 

 shelter be at their command. We now come to the torrid zone, 

 which may be aptly denominated the paradise of monkeys. Although 

 the regions in the temperate zones are open to this active tribe ot 

 animals (I will no longer style them quadrupeds), still it seems that 

 nothing has induced it to migrate from its own native and enchanting 

 territory ; a magnificent range certainly, of no less than forty-seven 

 degrees in extent ; and superabundantly replete with everything 

 necessary for life, for food, for safety, and for gratification, no matter 

 at what time of the year it be inspected. 



The torrid zone, then, is the favoured spot on which to lay the 

 foundation-stone of monkey-economy. It will be an entirely new 

 fabric. The attempt may seem to border on rashness, or on 

 self-sufficiency. When finished and offered to the public, should it 

 be found faulty in the eyes of our first-rate naturalists, and be con- 

 demned by them, I will bow submissive to their superior knowledge 

 and experience, and I will commit this treatise to the flames, just 

 as the curate and the barber of Cervantes served certain books of the 

 knight-errant's unlucky library. "Al fuego" "to the flames," ex- 

 claimed these keen inquisitors, when they had opened a volume of no 

 apparent utility, perhaps even with poison in its pages. I have read 

 some books on natural history, which, if they had their due, deserve no 



