1 90 THE MONKE Y FA MIL Y. 



Then let us have the monkey just where it ought to be, and nowhere 

 else. Its shoulders, its strong and tendinous arms, the strength 

 of its fore parts, and the slender structure of its hinder ones, its 

 appetites and astonishing agility, all conspire and force us to con- 

 cede that patrimony to the whole family, for which never-erring 

 nature has most admirably, and most indubitably, adapted it. There 

 aloft, amid the trees of the tropics, it will find a harmless neighbour 

 in the sloth slow indeed and awkward in the extreme, as I have 

 shown heretofore, when forced from its native haunts, but lively 

 and active when allowed to remain in them. Whilst the monkey 

 moves with speed, with firmness and security on the upper parts of 

 the branches, the sloth will be seen rapidly progressing underneath 

 by clinging to them both fulfilling by constitutional movements 

 their Creator's imperious mandates. When viewed at a distance 

 these two inhabitants of the forest appear genuine quadrupeds, but 

 a near inspection shows their true characters, and proves that they 

 ought not to be styled four-footed, nor even four-handed animals. 

 The monkey exhibits nothing that can be correctly called a foot, 

 saving the heel on its hinder limbs ; and the sloth can show nothing 

 that can even be considered part of a foot. Here, then, I bid fare- 

 well to the interesting family of the monkey, having done my best 

 to assign it a domain, where, aloft from the ground, and with 

 everything that can conduce to its health, to its safety, and to the 

 gratification of its propensities, it can enjoy life, and unerringly ful- 

 fil the orders of an all-wise Providence, which has destined it, not 

 to be an inhabitant of the ground, but to live, and to perpetuate 

 its progeny amid the everlasting verdure of the forests in the torrid 

 zone. 



A reviewer in Prater's Magazine for December 1857, having im- 

 pugned the accuracy of this history of the monkey family, Waterton 

 replied in his Introduction to the Second Edition : 



" My last little book goes merrily along, both in England and in 

 France, notwithstanding that here, in our own country, Eraser, my 

 former kind and liberal noticer, has pelted it with mud. I should 



