THE LARGER MONKEYS 
261 
miles of superincumbent ocean in eternal darkness and 
everlasting cold, may be better known in fifty years 
than the list of inhabitants of the Central African 
forest, with its horrible incubus of twilight gloom, 
and the matted tangle of encroaching vegetation, 
which rises solid and unbroken from the rotten soil 
beneath to the lowering and electric clouds and 
vapours that brood upon its upper surface. This 
forbidding region is probably the home of monkeys 
large and small, of strange forms and unknown habits, 
which will from time to time find their way to the 
Zoo, and astonish the visitors to the Monkey House 
as much as the first arrival of the ourang-outang and 
the gorilla. Even from the well-known Indian hills 
a monkey arrived lately which was quite new to the 
experience of connoisseurs; and it was at first pro- 
nounced to be a hybrid between a rhesus and a 
macaque. It is a large, solemn monkey, with thick 
“ vandyke-brown ” fur, and round, tranquil, brown eyes, 
as deliberate in its movements as the larger apes. 
Further information identified this monkey as a true 
macaque, from the little Himalayan State of Sikkim. 
The doubts as to its identity can hardly be matter for 
surprise, for the question of the possession of the 
State of Sikkim itself was only recently settled between 
the Indian and the Chinese Empires after a small 
frontier war, and protracted negotiations. 
So much has been written on the questions of 
monkey temper and monkey talk, that the conclusions 
of one who has for twelve years w r atched them daily, 
