OUR FOUR-HANDED RELATIVES. 2 / 



inoffensive chap; and it would, indeed, be a mistake 

 to suppose that all monkeys are naturally mischievous. 

 The little Tamarin (Midas rosalia] handles its playthings 

 more carefully than most children, and the females, espe- 

 cially, seem almost afraid to stir without their keeper's 

 permission. Gratuitous destructiveness is rather a dis- 

 tinctive trait of the African quadrumana, and their repre- 

 sentative in this respect is perhaps the Cercopithecns 

 Maurus, the Moor-monkey, or monasso, as they call him 

 in Spain, a fellow who seems to consecrate his temporal 

 existence to mischief with an undivided and disinter- 

 ested devotion. This Maurus and his cousin the rock- 

 baboon are the terror of the Algerian farmer ; but the 

 baboon contents himself with filling his belly, while the 

 other tears off twenty ears of corn for one he eats, and 

 often enters a fig-garden for the exclusive purpose of 

 stripping the trees of their leaves and unripe fruit. In 

 captivity he cannot be trusted even with a leather jacket, 

 and, finding nothing else to spoil, does not hesitate to 

 exercise his talent upon his younger relatives, to the 

 detriment of their woolly fur. Still, his intelligence and 

 restless activity make him a prime favorite with the fun- 

 loving Spanish sailors, and in the Andalusian seaports 

 every larger household has a monasso or two, monos 

 de cadena, " chain-monkeys," as the dealers call them, a 

 Moor-monkey and a cadena being as necessary concomi- 

 tants in civilized regions as a king and a constitution. A 

 rupture of the concatenation creates an alarm as if the 



