MONKEYS. 433 



Xvoods, glades, and shady walks, or skimming over the surface of quiet waters, where 

 moths, gnats, and other nocturnal insects are most abundant ; but in stormy weather 

 it remains shut up in the chinks and fissures of old ruins or concealed in hollow trees. 



ORDER QUADRUMANA.* 



There yet remains a spacious region to be tenanted with fit in- 

 habitants. The vast forests in many parts of the world constitute 

 by no means an unimportant territory. Umbrageous solitudes, 

 through which the foot of man has never found a path, covering 

 whole countries with unbroken shade, where endless summer 

 reigns, and fruits and flowers and foliage, in perpetual succession, 

 furnish inexhaustible supplies of nourishment. In these dense 

 woods, where giant trees are interlaced with creeping plants, in- 

 numerable Monkeys find their home, and spring from stem to 

 stem, and bough to bough, with wonderful alacrity, making the 

 woods alive with merry gambollings. The great feature whereby 

 the Quadrumana are distinguishable is that all their four feet are 

 generally provided with thumbs, which are free and opposable to 

 the other fingers. Although a few of them have a considerable 

 resemblance to the human form, they progressively recede from it 

 until the lower tribes walk exclusively on four legs, like ordinary 

 quadrupeds. Nevertheless, the freedom of their arms and the 

 structure of their hands allow many of them to imitate the gestures 

 and actions of mankind with ludicrous exactness. The entire Order 

 is formed for living in the trees of tropical forests, where the pre- 

 hensile character of their feet renders them perfectly at home. 

 Here they run, jump, and drop from bough to bough, or spring 

 from tree to tree, with wonderful agility, but poorly represented 

 by any feats of a similar kind performed in a state of captivity. 

 A remarkable peculiarity in the construction of their limbs, while 

 it incapacitates them for walking in an erect position, admirably 

 assists them in climbing. Their hinder hands or feet are inca- 

 pable of being brought flat to the ground, as in man ; but when 

 endeavouring to stand, the soles nearly face each other, and the 

 body rests on the outer edge of the foot ; their legs, too, are very 

 short, bent, and directed inwards, so that they may be termed 

 bow-legged. Their arms, moreover, are of inordinate length, and 

 the fingers very long in proportion to the thumbs, so that their 

 prehensile paws, when compared with the human hand, are ex- 

 tremely clumsy and inefficient. It is sufficient, indeed, to contrast 



* Quatour, four; manus, a hand : four-handed. 



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