252 RARE AND BEAUTIFUL MONKEYS 
allow it to rank amongst the first in the scale of 
monkey beauty. 
The pre-eminence in this respect belongs without 
question to the marmosets. Two of these are by 
this time sufficiently acclimatized to be placed in a 
separate cage in the large room of the Monkey 
House^ where they live in great contentment with 
another little tropical rarity, the Pinche monkey from 
Guiana. Except on very hot days, they prefer to 
spend their time curled up in a nest of hay, made 
in a small box at the top of the cage. When the 
keeper calls them, there is an answering cry from the 
inmate, and in a few seconds the sounds in the box 
are like those from a nest of active little twittering 
birds. Presently three bright little heads and a row 
of six miniature hands appear at the door, so rapidly 
put out and withdrawn that it is impossible to say to 
which of the inmates they belong. Then, after much 
conversation, apparently directed to the question of 
which is to get out of bed first, one marmoset de- 
scends a few inches of the stick which serves as a 
ladder to the sleeping-box, eagerly pushed from 
behind by the others, who are anxious to go shares 
in the food offered below, but unwilling to fetch it. 
When once out of the nest, the beauty of the 
marmoset’s colouring, as well as of its face and limbs, 
is at once apparent. The fur is more like the plumage 
of birds or moths than the hair of any four-footed 
animal, loose and feathery, and mottled with tortoise- 
shell on black, like the ornament seen in some of the 
