THE MONKE Y FA MIL Y. 195 



and in rags, now moistened by the dews of night, now parched by a 

 noonday sun, my reviewer was engaged in obtaining unsound in- 

 formation from the shelves of his library in ease voluptuous ; and 

 every now and then whispering to himself, I too, ere this, had been a 

 rover in the endless woods of America, had not that villanous yellow 

 fever been constantly staring me in the face. But let me touch with 

 gentleness this greenhouse plant too delicate for Nature's open 

 field. He taunts me with the remark, that ' a little anatomy (learning?) 

 is a dangerous thing,' because, forsooth, in my noticing the poison- 

 fangs of snakes, I have merely confined myself to a few simple words, 

 in preference to a scientific jaw-breaking description; so that our 

 young naturalists might know at once, in what part of a serpent's 

 head these terrible harbingers of death are invariably to be found 

 and this was all I aimed at. A scientific description would not have 

 cost me much, either in time or trouble ; for, on the day in which I 

 penned down my notice of the poison-fangs, I had more than half a 

 dozen rattlesnakes around me. 



" I marvel how old Prater's Magazine, so long and justly famed 

 for science, pith, and marrow, should have stained its fair pages by 

 inserting into them extracts such as those which my reviewer has 

 selected from Acosta, Vaillant, and the Guide-Book, to convince me 

 that monkeys are on a par with us intellectual beings. Some of the 

 tribe have, no doubt, a near resemblance to ourselves ; hence the 

 whimsical verse, said to be from the pen of old Ennius, l Simla, 

 quam similis, turpissima bestia nobis ! ' It is a clever hit at us, but 

 it only appertains to the outward form of man. So far as rationality 

 is concerned, the ape has no more title to it than has the half-starved 

 donkey, cropping thistles on the Queen's highway. 



" My little book having worn out its first suit of clothes within the 

 year, has just been supplied with another, and in a short time will 

 sally forth again on the world's wide stage. Renewed luck attend 

 thee, my dauntless little fellow. Be sure to thank, on the part of 

 thy parent, those gentlemen who have reviewed thee so kindly here- 

 tofore ; and shouldst thou fall in with him of Eraser's Magazine, tell 

 him with a smile, that thou art not much worse for his discourtesy 

 to thee. Thou mayest add that his critique, like old Priam's javelin, 

 is considered ' tdum imbelle sine ictnj a harmless dart. Say also, 



