APES, MONKEYS, AND LEMURS 



27 



almost entirely wanting. Egoism, which is a sign of humam dementia, is a very leading 

 characteristic of all monkeys. There is no doubt that the baboons might be trained to be 

 useful animals if they always served one master. Le Vaillant and many other travelers have 

 noted this. But they are too clever, and at the bottom too ill-tempered ever to be trust- 

 worthy, even regarded as " watches," or to help in minor manual labour. Baboons would 

 make an excellent substitute for dogs as used in Belgium for light draught ; but no one 

 could ever rely on their behaving themselves when their master's eye was elsewhere. 



Taken as a family, the monkeys are a feeble and by no means likeable race. They are 

 "undeveloped" as a class, full of promise, but with no performance. 



THE LEMURS 



THE South American monkeys, with their 

 forms and fur, are followed by a beautiful and 

 of creatures, called the LEMURS, with their 

 Maholis, and Pottos. Their resemblance to 

 their hands and feet. These are real and 

 hands, with proper thumbs. The second 

 always terminates in a long, sharp 

 alist, who kept them as pets no- 

 themselves with. Some of them 

 sensitive disk, full of extra 

 " Unlike the lively squirrels 

 hiding-places till the tropical^ 

 when they seek their 

 but by ascending to the 

 and again, at the first ap- 

 the light in the recesses 

 The RING-TAILED LEMUR 

 most of the race are so 

 the light seems to 

 they turn over., 

 same inarticu- 

 But at night 

 they fly from 

 so that the 

 whether they 



Photo by Ottnmar Anschiitx] [Br//n 



PIG-TAILED MONKEY CATCHING A FLY 



Most of the smaller monkeys, as well as the baboons, are fond of eating 

 insects. Beetles, white ants, and flies are eagerly sought and devoured 



squirrel-like 

 * interesting group 

 cousins the Lorises. 

 monkeys is mainly in 

 very highly developed 

 toe on the hind foot nearly 

 claw. " Elia," the Indian natur- 

 ticed that they used this ta scratch 

 have the finger-tips expanded into a 

 nerves. Lemur means " ghost." 

 and monkeys, they do not leave their 

 darkness has fallen on the forest, 

 food, not by descending to the ground, 

 upper surface of the ocean of trees, 

 proach of dawn, seek refuge from 

 of some dark and hollow trunk, 

 is as lively by day as night ; but 

 entirely creatures of darkness that 

 stupefy them. When wakened, 

 like sleeping children, with the 

 late cries and deep, uneasy sighs, 

 most are astonishingly active; 

 tree to tree, heard, but invisible ; 

 natives of Madagascar doubt 

 are not true lemures, the unquiet 



ghosts of their departed dead. 



Though the lemurs are here treated apart from the other animals of Madagascar, it will be 

 obvious that they are a curious and abnormal tribe. This is true of most of the animals of that 

 great island, which has a fauna differing both from that of the adjacent coast of Africa and from 

 that of India or Australia. In the FOSSA, a large representative of the Civets, it possesses a 

 species absolutely unlike any other. The Aye-aye is also an abnormal creature. Nor must it 

 be forgotten that Madagascar was until recently the home of some of the gigantic ground-living 

 birds. But, after all, none of its inhabitants are more remarkable than its hosts of lemurs, some 

 of which are to be met with in almost every coppice in the island. There are also many extinct 

 kinds. 



Exquisite fur, soft and beautifully tinted, eyes of extraordinary size and colour (for the pupil 

 shuts up to a mere black line by day, and the rest of the eye shows like a polished stone of rich 

 brown or yellow or marble gray), are the marks of most of the lemurs. But there are other 

 lemur-like creatures, or " lemuroids," which, though endowed with the same lovely fur, like 



