AMEKICAX MONKEYS. 511 



baboon-fortune, he is shot without ceremony, and his skin pulled 

 over his ears to be stuffed and exhibited in profane museums. 



The monkeys of the New World differ still more widely from 

 those of the Old than the copper-coloured Indian from the 

 woolly Negro. One sees at once on comparing them that whole 

 oceans roll between them, that they have not migrated from one 

 hemisphere to another, but belong to two different phases of 

 creation. While the nasal partition of the Old World simiae 

 is narrow as in man, it is broad without exception in all the 

 American monkeys, so that the nostrils are widely separated 

 and open sideways. The dental apparatus is also different, for 

 while the monkeys of our hemisphere have thirty-two teeth, 

 those of the western world generally possess thirty-six. 



The tailless monkeys or apes, and the short-tailed baboons, 

 are peculiar to our hemisphere, and it is only here that we find 

 almost voiceless simiae, while the American quadrumana are all 

 of them tailed, short-snouted, and generally endowed with sten- 

 torian powers. Finally, it would be as useless to look among 

 the western monkeys for cheek-pouches and sessile callosities, 

 as among those of tlie Old World for prehensile tails. 



In the boundless forests of tropical South America, the 

 monkeys form by far the greater part of the mammalian in- 

 habitants, for each species, though often, confined within nar- 

 row limits, generally consists of a large number of individuals. 

 The various arboreal fruits which the savage population of 

 these immeasurable wilds is unable to turn to advantage, fall 

 chiefly to their share ; many of them also live upon insects. 

 They are never seen in the open savannahs, as they never touch 

 the ground unless compelled by the greatest necessity. The 

 trees of the forests furnish them with all the food they require ; 

 it is only in the woods that they feel ' at home ' and secure 

 against the attacks of mightier animals ; why then should they 

 quit them for less congenial haunts ? For their perpetual 

 wanderings from branch to branch, Nature has bountifully en- 

 dowed many of them, not only with robust and muscular limbs 

 and large hands, whose moist palms facilitate the seizure of a 

 bough, but in many cases also with a prehensile tail, which may 

 deservedly be called a fifth hand, and is hardly less wonderful in 

 its structure than the proboscis of the elephant. Covered with 

 short hair, and completely bare underneath towards the end, 



