TROPICAL NATURE 



MAMMALIA 



Monkeys 



The highest class of animals, the Mammalia, although 

 sufficiently abundant in all equatorial lands, are those 

 which are least seen by the traveller. There is, in fact, 

 only one group the monkeys which are at the same time 

 pre-eminently tropical, and which make themselves perceived 

 as one of the aspects of tropical nature. They are to be met 

 with in all the great continents and larger islands, except 

 Australia, New Guinea, and Madagascar, though the latter island 

 possesses the lower allied form of Lemurs ; and they never 

 fail to impress the observer with a sense of the exuberant 

 vitality of the tropics. They are pre-eminently arboreal in 

 their mode of life, and are consequently most abundant and 

 varied where vegetation reaches its maximum development. 

 In the East we find that maximum in Borneo, and in the 

 West African forests ; while in the West the great forest 

 plain of the Amazon stands pre-eminent. It is near the 

 equator only that the great Anthropoid apes, the gorilla, 

 chimpanzee, and orang-utan are found, and they may be met 

 with by any persevering explorer of the jungle. The gibbons, 

 or long-armed apes, have a wider range in the Asiatic con- 

 tinent and in Malaya, and they are more abundant both in 

 species and individuals. Their plaintive howling notes may 

 often be heard in the forests, and they are constantly to be 

 seen sporting at the summits of the loftiest trees, swinging 

 suspended by their long arms, or bounding from tree to tree 

 with incredible agility. They pass through the forest at a 

 height of a hundred feet or more, as rapidly as a deer will 

 travel along the ground beneath them. Other monkeys of 

 various kinds are more abundant and usually less shy ; and in 

 places where firearms are not much used they will approach 

 the houses and gambol in the trees undisturbed by the 

 approach of man. The most remarkable of the tailed monkeys 

 of the East is the proboscis monkey of Borneo, whose long 

 fleshy nose gives it an aspect very different from that of most 

 of its allies. 



In tropical America monkeys are even more abundant 

 than in the East, and they present many interesting pecu- 



