14 



A NEW HISTORY OF 



investigation, — -and what talents can effect, when 

 properly directed ? Are all these champions in 

 error, when treating of the monkey family ? To 

 this, I answer, have a little patience, courteous 

 reader, everything shall he explained. In the 

 course of this treatise, I will do my hest to remove 

 from my old grandmothers nurseries, accounts of 

 the monkey family, which deserve a hetter place ; 

 allowing at the same time a multitude of absurd- 

 ities to remain there, as mental food for little 

 children. 



Before I proceed to examine minutely the move- 

 ments and the haunts of the monkey tribe, in a 

 state of pristine freedom, and to place every 

 individual of it, in an entirely new point of view 

 before my readers, I would fain draw their atten- 

 tion to an ape found in Gibraltar. It is called the 

 magot by French naturalists, and is an exception 

 from the general rule, — on account of its peculiar 

 locality. 



Portentous circumstances, in some very remote 

 period, quite unknown to us, may possibly have 

 placed this insignificant portion of the widely 

 extending family, in its present ambiguous position. 



Or perhaps, even man himself, the everlasting 

 interferer with the brute creation, may, in the 

 ardour of a whim, have conveyed a few African 



