2 
THE ZOO IN A FROST 
suggests a modification of too rigid ideas of the 
limitation of certain types of animals to warm or 
torrid climates, and illustrates the gradual and reluctant 
character of the retreat of species before the advance 
of the glacial cold in remote ages. No creatures are, 
as a rule, more sensitive to cold than the whole 
monkey tribe. Yet there is at least one species of 
monkey which habitually endures the rigours of a 
northern winter. One of the cleverest antique Japanese 
drawings at South Kensington represents a troop of 
monkeys caught in an avalanche of snow. The 
grotesque discomfiture of these pink-faced monkeys 
rolling down the hillside, helplessly clutching at each 
other’s bodies and limbs, grinning and grimacing as 
their heads emerge from the powdery snow, is some- 
thing more than the fancy of a Japanese painter. The 
incident is probably drawn from an actual scene, and 
one of the creatures, the Tcheli monkey from the 
mountains of Pekin, was in an open cage in the 
gardens, and in far better health and spirits than in 
the height of summer. Its fur had grown thick and 
close, and the naked face had assumed the dark 
madder-pink with which it was adorned in the draw- 
ing. When presented with sticks crusted with frozen 
ice, it sucked the chilly dainty with great relish, 
and only showed signs of sensitiveness to cold by 
putting its fingers in its mouth, and then sitting on 
its hands to warm them. The behaviour of this 
northern monkey is only strange by contrast with 
the general habits of its kind. But the indifference to 
