8 



THE APES AND MONKEYS. 



station of the Loango exploring party, is described 

 by Pechuel-Loesche as follows : " Our Apes used to 

 select some animal or thing and become sincerely 

 attached to it. In this way several of the strangest 

 friendships came about. It is generally known that 

 Apes adopt young animals, care for them and cling 

 to them even when they are dead. When our large 

 collie, ' Trina,' gave birth to pups, and these became 

 infested with fleas, we put the puppies in a cage with 

 the Apes, where they were received with open arms 

 carefully and tenderly cleaned and caressed, while 

 the old Dog was sitting outside and attentively look- 

 ing on. But there was always great trouble when 

 we went to fetch the pups ; they evidently had been 

 distributed with a view to keeping them. 



" Our mischievous Dog-faced Monkey struck up 

 a friendship with the Gorilla and the tyrant of the 

 yard, the smooth-coated Billy Goat, Mfuka. The 

 Baboon, Jack, had selected a fat little Pig for his 

 particular friend and performed the strangest eques- 

 trian feats on its back ; later, a Dog took the place of 

 the merry little Pig, and they played together in the 

 drollest way. Forbidding Isabella had taken a lik- 

 ing to a parrot; but when she one day started to 

 pluck out his scarlet tail-feathers, one by one, this 

 remarkable friendship came to an end." 



Taking into consideration the bad habits of the 

 Ape and the tricks he plays, his usefulness counts 

 as nothing. It is very easy to teach him ; you show 

 him what is required of him and beat him till he does 

 it himself ; that is all that is necessary ! In an hour 



or two he will know how to do a thing, but he has to- 

 be kept in practice, for he soon forgets. His feed- 

 ing is no trouble, for he eats anything Man eats. 



In their native countries, in places that are not 

 very fertile but more or less thickly settled, the 

 harm done by the Apes more than outweighs their 

 usefulness. The flesh of some kinds is eaten, and 

 the skins of some of the others are used for various, 

 purposes, but this little profit is as nothing com- 

 pared with the damage they cause in the fields and 

 orchards, and it is hard to understand how the Hin- 

 doos can think them sacred and care for them as if 

 they were demi-gods. 

 Classification We divide the Apes into three classes : 

 of The Narrow-nosed {Catarrkini) , the 



Apes. Broad-nosed {Platyrrhini) , and the; 

 Marmosets {Arctopithecini) . The first two have 

 nails on their fingers and toes ; the Marmosets have 

 nails only on the thumbs of their hind limbs, while 

 their other fingers and toes are provided with claws. 

 The Narrow-nosed and Broad-nosed are distin- 

 guished by peculiarities existing in their nasal septa- 

 and their teeth. The former have a narrow nasal 

 bone, the latter a broad one, their nostrils being 

 placed on the side. The Narrow-nosed are found 

 only in the; Eastern hemisphere. They are " Old 

 World Apes," and are restricted, except a single 

 species, the Barbary Ape, to Asia and Africa and 

 the great islands of these continents. The two> 

 others are limited to Mexico and Central and South. 

 America. 



^be 1Flartow*flo6eb Hpes. 



FIRST FAMILY: Catarrhini. 



The Narrow-nosed Apes resemble Man in the ar- 

 rangement of their teeth and the structure of the 

 nose. Their upper jaw shows a gap between the 

 ' incisors and canines, for the accommodation of the 

 lower canine tooth, which is very strong. Not one 

 of the representatives of this class has a prehen- 

 sile tail. They are subdivided into two groups, the 

 Man-shaped Apes {Anthropomorpha), and the Dog- 

 shaped Monkeys {Cynopithecini) . The former step- 

 only on the extreme outer edge of the feet, the lat- 

 ter on the entire sole. The Man-shaped Apes lack 

 a tail and cheek-pouches, and very few of them have 

 the callosities on their hinder quarters, that are al- 

 ways possessed by the Dog-shaped Monkeys, which 

 also, as a rule, often have cheek-pouches and a tail. 



THE MAN-SHAPED APES. 



The Man-shaped Apes {Anthropomorpha) form 

 the highest developed group of Apes, which in the 

 structure of their skeleton, and also in the formation 

 and position of the eyes and ears, come nearest to 

 Man. Their arms are longer than his, while their 

 legs are shorter. The tail is lacking. The face and 

 toes are not covered with hair. Of the four known 

 species, two, the Gorilla and Chimpanzee, inhabit 

 Africa; the Orang-utan and Gibbon, the southeast 

 of Asia. 



Hanno Over two thousand years ago the Car- 

 and the thagenians sent out a fleet with a view 

 "Wild Men." of founding colonies on the western 

 coast of Africa. Thousands of men and women, 

 well provided with provisions and household articles, 

 found room on sixty large ships. The commander of 

 the fleet was Hanno, who left a description of his 

 journey in a well-known work, the " Periplus Han- 

 nonis." They founded seven colonies in the course 

 of their voyage, but were obliged from a lack of pro- 

 visions to return sooner than they expected. Still, 

 when this happened, the bold seafarers had gone a 

 little farther than Sierra Leone. A description that 

 is of importance to us may be found in Hanno's- 

 work. It says : " On the third day after our depart- 

 ure from that place, we crossed the Fiery Rivers and 

 came to a bay, called the Southern Horn. In the 

 background there was an island with a lake, in which 

 a smaller island rose to view, peopled with wild men. 

 The greater part of the crowd were women, who had 

 a body all covered with hair, and the interpreters 

 called them 'Gorillas.' We could not catch the 

 men when we started to pursue them ; they escaped 

 us easily, as they climbed over precipices and threw 

 rocks at us. We caught three of the women, but 

 could not keep them prisoners as they bit and 

 scratched us ; so we had to kill them. We slew 



