Quadrupeds. 



7985 



The Apes at Gibraltar. 

 By the Rev. Alfred Charles Smith, M.A. 



During a recent tour through Spain I chanced to spend three 

 days, or parts of days, in a French steamer, and as we crossed over 

 from the African coast at Tangier, and neared Gibraltar, among other 

 topics of conversation, the well-known monkeys of the Rock were 

 naturally and very prominently made the subjects of inquiry, when, to 

 our surprise, and not a little to our disgust, M. le Capitaine treated the 

 whole story as a myth, and declared that no monkeys had ever really 

 existed there, but that it was a thorough English hoax, a badinage 

 very amusing to the "subs of Gib," but not to be credited for a moment 

 by any man of sense or science. I own to a feeling of very consider- 

 able disappointment when these words fell from the lips of the captain, 

 and, as it did not occur to me to doubt his accuracy (for I thought 

 that, as his vocation took him to that locality every week, he must 

 know the real state of the case), and as I did not then reflect that 

 everything connected with the English at Gibraltar (that marvellous 

 key to the Mediterranean, which is the envy of so many) is an object 

 of jealousy and suspicion to the foreigner, Frenchman no less than 

 Spaniard, and as I had totally forgotten our worthy Editor's account 

 of these apes ('Zoologist' for 1846, p. 1292), wherein he calls atten- 

 tion to the marvellous scepticism of Frenchmen generally, even the 

 savans of Paris, as to the existence of apes at Gibraltar, I landed with 

 the weight on my mind that, after all, there were no apes, and never 

 had been any apes, on the rock. 



And so, after a thorough English breakfast, in a thorough English 

 inn, which was a pleasant change after the abominations we had 

 endured in the fondas, posadas and ventas of the Peninsula, it was 

 with every thought of the monkeys banished from our minds that we 

 started forth to scale the rock, and view all the wondrous galleries and 

 overwhelming batteries of this most impregnable fortress. And when 

 we had satiated our unmilitary minds with an ample allowance of 

 cannons, mortars and shells, whose respective numbers, strength and 

 size'were duly detailed by the smart artilleryman who acted as our 

 cicerone, so different to the untidy, unmilitary sons of Spain, with 

 whom we had of late become familiar, we bethought ourselves (still 

 with minds free from the thought of monkeys, of which our once 

 dearly-cherished visions had been so rudely put to flight) that it 

 would be well to climb on to the flagstaff on the top of the rock, 

 VOL. XX. Y 



