1 29 2 Quadrupeds. 



its body. The latter is oval, pale greenish yellow, very plump, and the sutures of the 

 segments are indistinct : mouth fuscous, reaching to the base of the middle legs: an- 

 tennas fuscous, short, filiform, not one-fourth of the length of the body ; first and 

 second joints of equal size ; third large; fourth and fifth smaller; sixth much longer 

 than the fifth : no traces of tubes or tubercles on the abdomen : legs fuscous, short, 

 slender, weak ; coxa? small, situated far apart from each other ; tibiae as long as the 

 thighs; tarsi very short, 2-jointed. When young this species is narrower than when 

 full grown, it then attains the length of one line. 



Francis Walker. 



The Apes at Gibraltar. — To matter-of-fact naturalists there is something very laugh- 

 able in the pragmatical blundering of the hyper-scientific and philosophical naturalists. 

 The savans of this school in Paris have lately decided that there are no apes at Gibral- 

 tar : the isothermal lines, the temperature, the latitude, &c. preclude the possibility of 

 such a circumstance, yet in spite of this, and in spite also of the knowledge that many 

 in this country vastly prefer these absurd speculations to the multitudes of simple facts 

 which ' The Zoologist' is publishing month after month, I venture to reprint the fol- 

 lowing passages from the recently published works of an Englishman and a Frenchman. 

 The first is from Dr. E. F. Kelaart. " The Chamserops humilis, a palm very gene- 

 rally distributed over the Rock of Gibraltar, grows in great abundance on the south- 

 eastern side ; its tender leaves and young shoots constitute the principal food of the 

 apes which abound in this part of the Rock. The origin of this, the only quadruma- 

 nous animal in Europe, has been naturally the subject of many speculative opinions, 

 and I regret to say that I cannot throw any new light on its history ; but I am disposed 

 to side with the opinion, that these apes were introduced into Gibraltar by the Moors, 

 during their early possession of the Rock ; for even in the present day similar apes are 

 brought over from Barbary and sold in the market. Abyla, the hill on the opposite 

 coast of Africa, is still called Ape's Hill, from the number of those animals seen there. 

 The stationary habits of this animal on the Rock give additional interest to its history. 

 There is no obvious reason why some of the apes should not have migrated to the neigh- 

 bouring hills. The Queen of Spain's Chair, which is only three miles from Gibraltar, 

 might afford them some diversity ; but no, — they seem to prefer looking on their father- 

 land from the heights of Gibraltar, and feeding upon the palms which grow there, ra- 

 ther than travel to the fruitful valleys of Andalusia. They are never likely to be exter- 

 minated from the Rock, no person being allowed to shoot, or in anywise hurt them, un- 

 less they venture near the town, which they seldom do. Some years ago, one used to 

 come down on the declivities above the Alameda pretty regularly, during the time the 

 guards trooped, and it consequently went by the name of the ' Town Major.' The cu- 

 rious history of another of these apes is given by an ' Old Inhabitant,' in his very inte- 

 resting ' Guide to Gibraltar ;' who also very properly remarks,' where they bury their 

 dead it is impossible to say,' for no one has as yet found the carcass of any on the Rock. 

 Some think the lowermost caves their mausoleum, whilst others go even further in their 

 surmise, and suppose that they carry their dead into Africa, through a subterranean pas- 

 sage under the waters of the Mediterranean." The other passage to which I have re- 

 ferred is from Edmund lioissier, and is as follows. " A little above an old Moorish cas- 

 tle, whose solid masonry has resisted both time and weather, wc entered the galleries, 



