THE GREEN MONKEY. 11 



has a small but not very conspicuous tuft of long yellowish 

 hair. 



The green monkey is more admired for its beauty and lively 

 habits, than for its disposition. While young it is full of gaiety 

 and good nature, but as it grows older it becomes captious and 

 malicious. Yet like other monkeys, and even all animals, dif- 

 ferent individuals vary greatly in their disposition. M. F. Cuvier 

 has described an adult specimen which was perfectly gentle and 

 good-natured, fond of being scratched and petted by its ac- 

 quaintances, seldom getting enraged or attempting to bite, and 

 expressing its pleasure or contempt by a low gentle kind of 

 purring noise. 



Adanson, in his Travels in Senegal, has given the only account 

 yet published, of its habits in a state of nature This traveller, 

 who confesses that, for the sake of mere sport, he shot three-and 

 twenty of these creatures in the course of one hour, informs us 

 that within six leagues of Podor, on the landes (downs ?) to the 

 south of Donai, otherwise called Coq, the country was very woody, 

 and full of green monkeys, which he did not perceive but by 

 their breaking the boughs and the tops of the trees, from whence 

 they tumbled down on him ; for, in other respects, they were so 

 silent and nimble in their tricks that it would have been difficult 

 to perceive them. He killed two or three of them before the 

 others seemed to be much frightened ; however, when they 

 found themselves wounded, they began to seek shelter, some by 

 hiding themselves behind the larger boughs, others by descending 

 to the ground, but the majority by jumping from one tree to 

 another. Nothing, he says, could be more entertaining, when 

 several of them jumped together on the same bough, than to see 

 it bend under them, and the hindmost drop down to the ground, 

 whilst some got further on, and others were still suspended in 

 the air. Although he shot so many, yet not one of them 

 screeched the whole time, notwithstanding that they united in 

 companies, knit their brows, gnashed their teeth, and seemed as 

 if they meditated an attack on him. This statement of their 

 silence is at variance with M. F. Cuvier 's notice of the purring 



