TEE MONKEYS OF OLD. 
5 
Or they may be arranged as those, with : 1, cheek pouches and callosities, for instance, the 
Baboons; 2, those with callosities only, the Monkeys; and 3, those without either, and without a tail, 
the Apes. 
The second section, or the Platyrrhines , may be divided into those : 1, with prehensile tails; and 
2, those with the tails not prehensile ; and 3, those whose tail is furry. 
This great array of manikins (whence they get their name of Monkey — the word homunculus , 
“a sorry little fellow/’ having possibly something to do with it) is formed by creatures next 
to man, the highest in the scale of animals. They could be very readily distinguished from 
all others, were it not for the existence of a group of beings which resemble them in some par- 
ticulars. These are the next lowest in the scale, and they have thumbs on the hands and thumb- 
toes on the feet, but their fur is woolly, and they are cat-like in shape. They are called the Lemurs, 
or by some zoologists “ Half Apes.” These Lemurs only resemble in a slight degree some of the 
GROUP OF LEMURS. (From the Transactions of the Zoological Society.) 
Monkeys of the New World, but they are more like them than any other animals, and therefore are 
classified with them. 
The order of beings to which these various creatures belong is known by the name of “ Primates,” 
which implies the rank they hold in the scale of creation. Man stands first, very distinct in his 
intellectual powers and spiritual gifts from the most intelligent of the Quadrumana and as much 
superior to them in his construction. Then comes the world of Monkeys, the “ man-shaped ” at the 
head, and the little marmosets, with furry tails, at the bottom of the array, and linked on to these 
are the Half Apes or Lemurs. They all form a great order of the animal kingdom which stands first 
and at the head of all other orders of the animal world. 
But what would the old Monkeys whose bones have been dug out of strata which are older than 
the Himalayan mountains and the Alps say could they visit such a collection as that suggested? 
They would recognise their fellow-monkeys, but would look upon them as pigmies in size. They 
would be few in number, for though Monkeys go the way of all flesh very rapidly, skeletons of them 
are very rarely found, so rarely indeed that many Indians believe that the other Monkeys bury them. 
The fact is, that there are plenty of Jackals, to say nothing of birds of prey, ready to snap up a dead, 
dying, or invalid Ape, and to turn its protoplasm into their own. Some few tumble into holes, and may 
be preserved there, and probably that was how the old bones were hidden up. The old kinds 
resembled the new more or less, but for the most part those which have been carefully examined 
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