ORDER QUADRUMANA. 303 



vancing their long arms and legs alternately, and taking 

 care to preserve their equilibrium, by attaching their mobile 

 and serpent-like tail to every neighbouring object. Instead 

 of leaning their toes or the entire sole of the foot upon 

 the ground, and being thus either digitigrades or planti- 

 grades, they proceed by leaning on the internal side of 

 their fore hands and the external side of the hinder hands. 

 This creeping gait has caused them to be compared to 

 spiders, and accordingly we have seen that one species is 

 named Arachnoides, a term sometimes applied to the whole 

 group. But in proportion as they are slow and embar- 

 rassed on the earth, so are they brisk and agile in the trees. 

 They traverse them even to the smallest branches, with 

 the most inconceivable activity and address. 



They dart from one tree to another even when they are 

 separated by no small interval, and as they subsist princi- 

 pally upon fruits, they seldom find occasion to descend to 

 the ground, except in search of water. 



They live in numerous troops, and mutually succour 

 each other in the moment of danger. When they meet 

 with any one, in those sequestered places, where they have 

 not yet learned to fear man, or fly from him, they approach 

 and pelt the intruder with the branches of trees, and not 

 unfrequently with their own excrement. They act thus 

 without doubt, every time they perceive a new being, and 

 by the impulse of an instinct, the object of which seems ra- 

 ther to disturb than to menace or to hurt. They seem to 

 act without anger, and to intend nothing but the removal 

 of the intrusive stranger, and doubtless with the generality 

 of animals, their mode of proceeding is found completely to 

 answer the purpose. When they are hunted, and one of 

 them is wounded, they all fly to the summit of the tree send- 

 ing forth the most lamentable cries. The wounded animal 

 puts his fingers to the part, and looks steadily at the flowing 

 of the blood, until through weakness he loses all conscious- 

 ness and expires. He usually then remains suspended to 



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