290 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



repair to their usual sleeping-place, which is as far as possible out 

 of the reach of beasts of prey, and, after prolonged wrangling and 

 disputing, scolding and brawling, they seek their well-earned rest. 



Apart from occasional compulsory or apparently profitable 

 migrations, the order of the day above described suffers little 

 change. Reproduction, which brings about such marked changes 

 in the lives of other animals, has very little influence on that of the 

 monkeys, for it is limited to no special time, and the mothers carry 

 their young ones with them wherever they go. The young ones, of 

 which most species produce only one at a birth, come into the world 

 as well-developed creatures, with open eyes, but according to our 

 ideas they are extremely ugly, and, notwithstanding their compara- 

 tively advanced development, very helpless creatures.^^ They appear 

 ugly because their wrinkled faces and wide open, lively eyes give 

 them the expression of an old man, and their short hair makes 

 their long fore limbs look longer than they really are; they show 

 themselves helpless in that they can make no use of these limbs 

 except to attach themselves to their mother's breast. Here they 

 hang, with arms and hands round her neck, legs and feet round her 

 hips, without seeming to move anything but their heads for weeks 

 together, and the mother is therefore able, without being appreciably 

 burdened, to go about her ordinary affairs, and wanders as usual 

 along the most breakneck paths, or indulges in the boldest leaps. 

 After some time, rarely within a month, the little ones begin to 

 attempt some movements, but perform them so awkwardly that 

 they excite pity rather than laughter. Perhaps because of this very 

 helplessness, the little monsters are watched and handled by their 

 mothers with such tenderness that the expression "monkey-love" is 

 fully justified. Every monkey mother finds constant occupation in 

 looking after her baby. Now she licks it, now cleans its coat, now 

 lays it to her breast, now holds it in both hands as if she wished to 

 feast her eyes on it, and now she rocks it as if to lull it to sleep. 

 If she sees that she is watched she turns away, as if she grudged 

 anyone else a sight of her darling. When it is older and able to 

 move about it is sometimes allowed to leave its mother's breast for a 

 little, and to play with others like itself, but it remains meanwhile 



