THE MONKE Y FAM1L Y. 1 77 



entrance into these important places ; but they have punished me 

 awfully in other parts. They have rooted up and eaten all the 

 crocus bulbs, stormed the potato-pies, and fleeced the celery. The 

 gardener came to me in a white passion, and he informed me that 

 " them rattens " had totally demolished every early pea, which he 

 had cherished with such care. I tried to pacify him by observing, 

 that sometimes such misfortunes will happen, in the best regulated 

 families, take what pains we choose to protect our goods. " * Them 

 rattens ' are a'hungry race, George," said I; " and I don't know what 

 we can do, because they are our masters. A winter in Nova Zembla, 

 or a summer in the tropics, is all one to them. Hanoverians will 

 fatten on fish in Iceland, and luxuriate amid carrion in the burning 

 plains of tropical America. The cellar and the garret are all one to 

 them, provided prog be within reach." 



Once when I was studying poetry at college, I attempted to 

 celebrate in verse the arrival of "them rattens" in our country. 

 The song began thus : 



" When want and misery ran over 

 The worn out soil of far Hanover, 

 Guelph took his stick, and put his hat on, 

 Came straight to England's shore to fatten, 

 And brought with him his half-starved ratten," &c. 



I have introduced the foregoing little episodes, if I may call them 

 so, and adduced the different localities of different species of animals, 

 in order to prepare the reader for the well-defined, and the indubit- 

 able range, in which I am about to locate the entire monkey family, 

 great and small, on both continents. I say locate, because I feel 

 quite sure that this numerous family has one particular range allotted 

 to it, and no other ; just as the land has been given to ourselves, 

 and the sea to fishes. Moreover, this family has never yet strayed 

 out of the range which it now enjoys ; and no occurrence will ever 

 force it to abandon this range, until time shall be no more. If the 

 reader should expect to find, in the sequel of this treatise, a minute 

 description of each class of monkeys, together with their divisions 

 and their sub-divisions, and also a lengthy catalogue of modern 

 names, the very sound of which would startle a bat in its winter 



M 



