76 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



case. So whenever you, my young friend, are inclined to 

 but never mind the moral. 



We have only one kind of monkey now living wild in 

 Europe, the tailless Barbary ape, a relation of the maca- 

 ques, and even he is perhaps not a true native but only a 

 colonist. It is said that there are now scarce a dozen left 

 to lead a precarious existence on the Rock of Gibraltar : 

 but in North Africa they are still abundant. In the ages 

 of the past, however, we have evidence that monkeys lived 

 much further north in Europe, as far as Eppelsheim, 

 though they have not as yet been found in England. They 

 were gradually driven southwards by the on-coming of the 

 more rigorous climate which culminated in the intense cold 

 of the Glacial Epoch. 



The last group of the old world monkeys I will mention 

 is the tribe of the dog-faced baboons. Who can have for- 

 gotten the baboons in Ready's narrative ? I well remem- 

 ber being somewhat rudely disturbed by a troop of these 

 creatures near Ceres, a village in South Africa. I had 

 selected a spot of exceeding beauty near to the village, to 

 which I returned again and again. It was an open cave or 

 rock-shelter, in the cool shade of which grew ferns in rich 

 and luxuriant profusion. Before me lay a little lakelet or 

 large rock pool, into which I could plunge from an over- 

 hanging rock ten or twelve feet high into clear water of 

 thrice that depth, and enjoy a delightful swim. It was 

 surrounded with green rushes, and was fed at the upper 

 end by a bright cool stream which leapt and sparkled be- 

 tween walls of smooth rock before making a leap of some 

 ten or a dozen feet. From where I sat in my rock-shelter 

 the stream was invisible, but through the gap which it had 

 made in the sandstone rocks could be seen the blue flat- 

 topped outline of one of the mountains or hills of the Cold 

 Bokkeveldt, distant some twenty miles. Hither I would 



