84 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



of the body being naked. The face, hands and feet are usually 

 black in monkeys, but just as the hands and feet of negro infants 

 are paler in colour, so these regions in very young monkeys are white 

 or pink {see Plate IX, p. 165). A complete coat of fur appears in a few 

 months, and if there be no difference between the sexes, it is like 

 that of the adult from the first, but paler. The face and hands 

 acquire the pigmentation more slowly, and if there are brightly 

 coloured patches of naked skin, these are the last to appear and do 

 not acquire their full richness untU the animal is almost adult. So 

 also the beards, crests and special tufts, often strongly marked in the 

 males, appear towards maturity. The three plates (I, Frontispiece; 

 IX, p. 165 ; and X, p. 166) showing young anthropoid apes, and 

 human children, the mother and young of a langur monkey and of 

 a lemur aU show the similar differences between young and adults. 



The Cats, great and small, show abundant traces of a primitive 

 spotted pattern. The spots are most frequent in the young. In 

 some they are retained throughout life over the whole body in both 

 males and females ; in others traces of them remain on the under 

 parts, or on the sides, especially in the females ; in others, again, they 

 are found in the winter fur but disappear in the summer fur. In 

 some they have elongated or fused to form stripes, or are twisted 

 into spiral markings. In others they are obliterated, being washed 

 over, so to speak, with an even tint, and this tint may be still 

 further elaborated by the appearance of special markings, coloured 

 manes and so forth. The whole group shows extremely well the 

 replacement of the primitive growth pattern by patterns of higher 

 grade. The changes in coloration are produced either by a gradual 

 loss and replacement of the individual hairs — and this usually takes 

 place in the natives of tropical countries — or by a regular moult at 

 the beginning of the warm season and a slighter moult with a rapid 

 growth of thick fur at the beginning of the cold season. The 

 winter coat is often lighter in colour because of the growth of a very 

 thick under-fur ; sometimes, as in the Northern lynx, it is more 

 spotted, but usually it is paler and less brightly marked with 

 shades of black and orange than is the spring breeding pelage. 



The young are always born with a thick and soft coat of fur. 

 In the tiger and the striped cats and in aU the spotted cats, the 

 coloration of this differs from that of the adult only in being rather 

 paler, whilst in those cats which are brown in the adult condition the 

 young are profusely spotted. Young lions are thickly set with spots, 

 especially on the sides and under parts, whilst the tail shows signs 



