1 84 THE MONKE Y FAMIL Y. 



little deviation from the ordinary track of writing, will be pardoned 

 by them, and possibly may tend to avert an attack of drowsiness on 

 the part of the reader, whilst the book is placed open on the table 

 before him. 



DIALOGUE. 



"Tell me, interesting ape from Borneo, are you quite at your 

 ease, when you are seen suspended by your arms from the branch ? " 

 " Perfectly so, my dear sir ; all my limbs have been formed by the 

 hand of our Creator for exercise amongst the branches of the trees. 

 Only examine me minutely, and you will perceive that my very body 

 itself is wholly adapted to a life in the trees, for it is remarkably 

 brawny in the fore parts, and slender in the hinder ones. This gives 

 me a wonderful power of safe transition through the trees, be they 

 ever so high. I am absolutely and entirely a native of the arboreal 

 regions. Pray, do examine my limbs. The fore ones are hands 

 complete like your own, saving that the thumb is somewhat shorter. 

 Although in appearance slender, they are so tendinous and strong, 

 that when I have once applied them to a branch, I am in the most 

 perfect security. Now, my hinder limbs as, no doubt, you will have 

 observed already are of a construction the most singular, and at the 

 same time the most useful that can possibly be imagined. They 

 are half-hand and half-foot conjoined. Thus their fingers assist 

 those of the fore hands in climbing, whilst the heels tend to keep 

 me perfectly steady on the branch, wherever I rove. With such a 

 formation, say what have we to do on the ground ? The tree is our 

 undoubted locality. It is equally our birth-prerogative and the 

 place of our death. Believe me, that all we of the monkey family, 

 whether in the Old World or in the New, are inhabitants of the trees, 

 and of the trees only, saving that little colony of ours in Gibraltar; 

 and we have, unfortunately, no tradition to inform us how, in the name 

 of wonder, they ever got there. Be assured, if they could, by any 

 chance, slip away from the garrison, they would, to an ape, rejoin 

 our brethren in Barbary, and come within the tropic, when the sun 

 is on his returning journey from the north. In fine, let me tell you, 

 my dear sir, once for all, that every monkey in the known world, 

 whether in infancy or in old age, whether in health or in sickness, 



