148 HOUSE, GARDEN, AND FIELD 



their own width. Any monkey which is short- tailed or 

 tailless, or which has cheek-pouches, in which it can stow 

 away nuts, or has large, coloured, bare patches on the face, 

 or at the top of the thighs (callosities), or has a thoroughly 

 opposable thumb, comes from the Old World. On the 

 other hand, any monkey which has the nostrils widely 

 separated, or which can grasp with its tail, comes from 

 the New World. 



In the organ-grinder's monkey the hand has the thumb 

 turned forwards like the fingers, and hardly opposable; 

 one might say that it has five fingers and no thumb ; such 

 a hand is convenient for catching hold of a horizontal 

 bough, or for running about on the branches of trees, but 

 does not give quite so firm a grip as a hand with an oppos- 

 able thumb. Both the tail and the hand tell us that this 

 is a forest-monkey. In the great forests of South America 

 a large proportion of the land- animals are adapted to life 

 on trees ; among the number are monkeys, sloths, tree- 

 snakes, tree-frogs and tree-haunting beetles. 



This is often called the Capuchin-monkey, because the 

 hair stands up round his face, so that fanciful people have 

 compared him to a monk, with face looking out from a 

 cowl ; his Indian name is Sapajou, or something like that. 

 He comes from the forests of Guiana, where, I am told, 

 the Indians capture him in a particularly cruel way. They 

 look out for a mother with a young one, shoot the mother, 

 and sell the young one into captivity. The Capuchin- 

 monkey has olive-green hair mixed with brown and black ; 

 his bare, wrinkled forehead makes him look sad and old, 

 but I dare say he can be cheerful when he is well treated. 

 We sometimes meet the Weeper-monkey in the streets 

 instead of the Capuchin ; his hair is brown, and the top 

 of his head dark-coloured. 



There are some South American monkeys which are even 

 more of tree-monkeys than the Capuchins. Their arms 

 and legs are extraordinarily long and slender, the tail is 

 not only very long, but has a bare patch near the tip, 



