300 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



upon yon, having been broken off as the monkeys 

 pass along them ; but they are never hurled from 

 their hands. 



Monkeys, commonly so called, both in the old 

 and new continent, may be classed into three 

 grand divisions: namely, the ape, which has no 

 tail whatever ; the baboon, which has only a short 

 tail; and the monkey, which has a long tail. 

 There are no apes, and no baboons, as yet dis- 

 covered in the new world. Its monkeys may be 

 very well and very briefly ranged under two 

 heads : namely, those with hairy and bushy tails ; 

 and those whose tails are bare of hair under- 

 neath, about six inches from the extremity. Those 

 with hairy and bushy tails climb just like the 

 squirrel, and make no use of the tail to help them 

 from branch to branch. Those who have the tail 

 bare underneath towards the end, find it of infinite 

 advantage to them, in their ascent and descent. 

 They apply it to the branch of the tree, as though 

 it were a supple finger, and frequently swing by 

 it from the branch like the pendulum of a clock. 

 It answers all the purposes of a fifth hand to the 

 monkey, as naturalists have already observed. 



The large red monkey of Demerara is not a 

 baboon, though it goes by that name, having a 

 long prensile tail.^ Nothing can sound more 

 dreadful than its nocturnal bowlings. While lying 

 in your hammock in these gloomy and immeasur- 

 able wilds, you hear him howling at intervals, 

 from eleven o'clock at night till daybreak. You 

 would suppose that half the wild beasts of the 



' I believe prensile is a new-coined word. I have seen it, but 

 do not remember where. 



