THE GIBRALTAR MONKEY 



communicated to the Zoological Society, the fact that 

 no less than thirty of these tailless apes had been seen 

 in one herd. The interest of the presence of these apes 

 in Europe seems on the whole to have been allowed 

 to overbalance the objections felt towards them on 

 account of their depredations in gardens. But it is not 

 quite certain how far the interest is a genuine one, 

 that is to say, how far the Macacus inuus is a really 

 indigenous inhabitant of African Spain, and whether 

 it was not at one time deliberately introduced there 

 and allowed to run wild. Be this as it may, the ape 

 proved capable of establishing itself in the more'in- 

 accessible parts of " the Rock." Macacus inuus belongs 

 to a genus of monkeys, which is, like the baboon, a 

 member of the Catarrhine subdivision. So that it is 

 unnecessary to recapitulate the characters which, being 

 a Catarrhine, it shares with the baboon. These monkeys 

 are, with the exception of the species which we are here 

 considering, entirely Asiatic in range ; and many 

 members of the genus are familiar enough, for a large 

 assortment is always on view in the monkey house 

 and the outside monkey cages at the Zoo. The Gib- 

 raltar monkey is also exceptional in that it has no tail, 

 though in many of its allies for instance in the Tcheli 

 monkey, that thick -furred inhabitant of the Yung Ling 

 mountains of Northern China the tail is plainly on 

 the way towards disappearance. On the other hand the 

 common bonnet monkey and Rhesus monkey have 

 longish tails. There are altogether some fifteen or 

 sixteen species of macaques. The Barbary or Gibraltar 

 ape has a certain historical interest in that it appears 

 to have been the monkey dissected and studied by 

 Galen the Greek physician. 



34 



