6 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



from our own repeated observations, for the amazing 

 skill and rapidity with which they will catch and return 

 a ball, sweep their stand, load and fire their miniature 

 gun, and play the various antics to which they have 

 been trained. 



Nevertheless, the monkeys of the Old World are, as 

 we have said, the more man-like in structure, and no 

 animal to be found between the Atlantic and the Pacific, 

 makes any approach to the closeness wherewith the 

 anthropoid (or specially man-like apes) resemble us. 



Some Old World monkeys have no thumbs, and none 

 have what we should call a good one ; but even the most 

 brutal baboon has a better one than has any of the 

 American apes, in all of which the thumb is more like a 

 fifth finger, bending around nearly in the same plane as 

 the others. 



Only one monkey has a chin, and that is an inhabitant 

 of Sumatra, and no ape out of Asia has a really pro- 

 minent nose. 



No monkey's tones are so pleasant as are the flute-like 

 notes which the sapajous will often emit when pleased, 

 but no ape gives out such man-like sounds as are 

 chanted by the long-armed apes, or gibbons, of the Old 

 World. Often he has a short tail, and sometimes none, 

 but almost all those of America have a long one, though 

 in a few very singular forms, to be presently noted, it is 

 short. 



Monkeys of the Old World ascend to higher latitudes 

 than do those of the New. None are known to us as 

 having been found in America to the north of southern 

 Mexico : but monkeys are denizens of Gibraltar, Central 

 Asia, and Japan, in the eastern hemisphere. This great 

 distinctness between the apes of the Old World and the 

 New, at once suggests some curious questions to which, 



