OUR FOUR-HANDED RELATIVES. -y 



quarter of a century. The pulmonary diseases of the 

 human species have less to do with a low temperature 

 than with the impurities of the in-door atmosphere, and 

 the effluvium of a menagerie is notoriously offensive : 

 still, it is a strange fact that small monkeys, like squir- 

 rels, can for a long time subsist on a very minimum of 

 life-air. I have seen my macaques crawl into a pile of 

 cast-off clothing and cover themselves, head and all, 

 with a sixfold stratum of coats and blankets before going 

 to sleep ; and during the coldest nights of an Ohio 

 winter a dealer in zoological sundries kept a spider- 

 monkey alive by bundling him up with a couple of fluffy 

 terriers. His method was to chuck them into a sack 

 half full of wool and hay, tie the sack, put it into a 

 barrel, and cover it with an extra blanket or two, accord- 

 ing to the state of the weather. He has tried the same 

 plan with squirrel-monkeys and capuchins, and his suc- 

 cess seems to prove that animals can get along with 

 less air than is generally supposed. The nest of the 

 common ground-squirrel is even a greater puzzle to the 

 zoological physiologist: long before the beginning of 

 the hibernating season the little bobtails retire to the 

 bottom of a hole where all the air that can possibly 

 reach them has to penetrate an eighteen-inch mass of 

 compact moss and hay, often besides a thick layer of 

 dead leaves and rubbish. 



A somewhat paradoxical character-trait of the more 

 intelligent four-handers is their antipathy to children. 



