152 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



The whole monkey-tribe is especially tropical, only a 

 few kinds being found in the warmer parts of the temperate 

 zone. One inhabits the Rock of Gibraltar, and there is 

 one very like it in Japan, and these are the two monkeys 

 which live farthest from the equator. In the tropics they 

 become very abundant and increase in numbers and 

 variety as we approach the equator, where the climate is 

 hot, moist, and equable, and where flowers, fruits, and 

 insects are to be found throughout the year. Africa has 

 about 55 different kinds, Asia and its islands about 60, 

 while America has 114, or almost exactly the same as 

 Asia and Africa together. Australia and its islands have 

 no monkeys, nor has the great and luxuriant island of New 

 Guinea, whose magnificent forests seem so well adapted 

 for them. We will now give a short account of the 

 different kinds of monkeys inhabiting each of the tropical 

 continents. 



African Monkeys. 



Africa possesses two of the Simiidae or great man-like 

 apes — the gorilla and the chimpanzee, the former being 

 the largest ape known, and the one which, on the whole, 

 perhaps most resembles man, though its countenance is 

 less human than that of the chimpanzee. Both are found 

 in West Africa, near the equator, but they also inhabit the 

 interior wherever there are great forests ; and Dr. Schwein- 

 furth states that the chimpanzee inhabits the country 

 about the sources of the Shari river in 28° E. long, and 

 4° N. lat. The gorilla is a more recent discovery than the 

 other man-like apes, and owing bo its great size and strength 

 and the almost impenetrable forests in which it lives, is 

 even now but imperfectly known. It was discovered by 

 Dr. Savage in 1847 in the region of the Gaboon river, 

 close to the equator in West Africa. He first obtained a 

 skull which he believed to belong to a new species of 

 ape, and afterwards the entire animal, which he sent to 

 America, where it was described by Professor Wyman, an 

 anatomist of Boston. The first young gorilla was brought 

 to Europe in 1876, but none of these apes live long in 



