CH. VII MONKEYS— AFFINITIES AND DISTRIBUTION 147 



Let us, then, examine a little more closely in what the 

 resemblance consists, and how far, and to what extent, 

 these animals really differ from us. 



Besides the face, which is wonderfully human — although 

 the absence of any protuberant nose gives it often a 

 curiously infantile aspect, monkeys, and especially apes, 

 resemble us most closely in the hand and arm. The hand 

 has well-formed fingers with nails, and the skin of the 

 palm is lined and furrowed like our own. The thumb is, 

 however, smaller and weaker than ours, and is not so 

 much used in taking hold of anything. The monkey's 

 hand is, therefore, not so well adapted as that of man for 

 a variety of purposes, and cannot be applied with such 

 precision in holding small objects, while it is unsuitable 

 for performing delicate operations such as tying a knot or 

 writing with a pen. A monkey does not take hold of a 

 nut with its fore-finger and thumb as we do, but grasps 

 it between the fingers and the palm in a clumsy way, just 

 as a baby does before it has acquired the proper use of its 

 hand. Two groups of monkeys — one in Africa and one in 

 South America — have no thumbs on their hands, and yet 

 they do not seem to be in any respect inferior to other 

 kinds which possess it. In most of the American monkeys 

 the thumb bends in the same direction as the fingers, and 

 in none is it so perfectly opposed to the fingers as our 

 thumbs are ; and all these circumstances show that the 

 hand of the monkey is, both structurally and functionally, 

 a very different and very inferior organ to that of man, 

 since it is not applied to similar purposes, nor is it capable 

 of being so applied. 



When we look at the feet of monkeys we find a still 

 greater difference, for these have much larger and more 

 opposable thumbs than their hands have, and are there- 

 fore more like our hands; and this is the case with all 

 monkeys, so that even those which have no thumbs on 

 their hands, or have them small and weak and parallel to 

 the fingers, have always large and well-formed thumbs on 

 their feet. It was on account of this peculiarity that the 

 great French naturalist Cuvier named the whole group of 

 monkeys Quadrumana, or four-handed animals, because, 



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