APES AND MONKEYS. "A wilderness of Monkeys." MERCHANT OF VENICE. MAZURIER, it is said, after a long and patient attendance upon the monkeys domiciled in the Jardin du Roi, sewed up in skins, and with a face painted and made up in a concatenation accordingly, raised at last the benevolence of a tender-hearted one to such a pitch, that it offered him a bit of the apple it was eating, and drew from him that rapturous exclamation, pregnant with the consciousness of his apparent identity with the monkey-character -"Enfin ! enfin, je suis singe!" Poor Mazurier! when he died, Polichinelle was shipwrecked indeed. We can see him now gaily advancing, as if Prometheus had just touched the wood with his torch, in a brilliant cocked hat of gilt and silvered pasteboard, with rosettes to match, gallantly put on athwart ships; that very pasteboard, so dear to recollection as having glittered before our delighted eyes when old nurse unfolded the familiar little books of lang-syne--books which in these philosophical days are shorn of their beams; for Cock-Robin,' "Little Red Riding Hood," Jack and his Bean-stalk, The Children in the Wood," "The Seven Champions," Valentine and Orson," with the other dearly-beloved legends of our childhood, when permitted to enter the nursery, are more soberly clad: their splendid and many coloured attractive coats have almost entirely disappeared. 66 Mazurier was the personification of that invincible Prince of Roués, Punch; but if the comic strength of this elastic, this Indian-rubber man lay in Polichinelle, it was in "The Ape of Brazil" that his tragic power lay-and that power, absurd as the expression may seem to those who never beheld him, was great. There was but one blot in his inimitable performance. It was perfect as a piece of acting-if that may be called acting which, like Morris Barnett's Monsieur Jacques, is nature itself; but, alas! Mazurier had dressed the character without a tail. The melodrama was admirably got up; but there, to the great distress of zoologists, was the tailless quadrumane in the midst of Brazilian scenery, where no traveller-and travellers are proverbial for seeing strange things--has ever ventured to say that he saw a monkey without that dignifying appendage. How true is it that wisdom-such wisdom as it is-brings sorrow; all the rest of the world were in ecstacies; the zoologists shook their heads, and the scene ceased to affect them. Be it remembered henceforth by the getters-up of monkey melodramas, that all the monkeys of the New World yet discovered rejoice in tails; the anthropoid apes of the Old World have none. But, tailed or tailless, this amusing order of mammiferous animals has always been, and ever will be, regarded by the million with feelings of mingled interest and disgust. Every one is irresistibly attracted by the appearance and tricks of a monkey --very few leave the scene without something like mortified pride at the caricature held up to them. The zoologist regards the family with an interest proportioned to their approximation to man; but he knows that their apparent similarity to the human form vanishes before anatomical investigation; and that, although there may be some points of resemblance, the distance between the bimanous and the quadrumanous types, notwithstanding all the ingenious arguments of those philosophers who support the theory of a gradual development from a monad to man, is great. We would treat with respect such names as Lamarck, Bory de Saint Vincent-ay, and others, even unto Monboddo, though the announcement of the last will hardly be received by any naturalist with gravity; but we must beg leave to differ from them toto cœlo. Leaving the tail out of the question, there is no doubt that the number and quality of the teeth in some species are identical with the formula belonging to the human subject; and there may be as little that the peasants of the Landes of Aquitaine, who gain their living by climbing for the resin of the Pinus Maritima, have acquired a power of opposing, in a certain degree, the great toe to the others; but these facts are, after all, but traps for the unwary, as those who wish to be informed on the subject will see by turning to Professor Owen's paper on the Osteology of the Chimpanzee and Orang Utan.* A modern zoologist† has, not inaptly, applied the term Cheiropeds or hand-footed animals to this group; and, indeed, strictly * Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, vol. 1. p. 343. speaking, they can hardly be called quadrumanous or four-handed. Their extremities, admirably fitted for grasping and climbing, as far as their arboreal habits require those actions, fall short-how very far short!—of that wonderful instrument which surrounds a being born one of the most helpless of all creatures, with necessaries, comforts, and luxuries, and enables him to embody his imaginings in works almost divine. We look in vain among the most perfectly formed of the anthropöid apes for the well-developed opposable thumb of the human hand-that great boon, the ready agent of man's will, by means of which he holds "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." The hands of the monkeys are at best but "half made up,” and they are generally more or less well fashioned in proportion to the greater or less prehensile development of the tail. The habits of the race, as we have already hinted, are arboreal, and their favourite haunts are the recesses of those tropical forests where they can either sport in the sunbeams on the topmost boughs, or shelter themselves from its scorching rays under the impervious canopy of a luxuriant vegetation. When their privacy is invaded by man, a restless and constantly recurring curiosity seems to be their prevailing feeling at first, and at last the intruders are frequently pelted with stones, sticks, and fruits heavy and hard, more especially if they make any demonstration of hostility. Robert Lade thus speaks of their behaviour when he went to hunt some of them near the Cape : "I can neither describe all the arts practised by these animals, nor the nimbleness and impudence with which they returned after being pursued by us. Sometimes they allowed us to approach so near them, that I was almost certain of seizing them; but when I made the attempt, they sprung, at a single leap, ten paces from me, and mounted trees with equal agility, from which they looked with great indifference, and seemed to derive pleasure from our astonishment. Some of them were so large, that if our interpreter had not assured us that they were neither ferocious nor dangerous, our number would not have appeared to be sufficient to protect us from their attacks. As it would serve no purpose to kill them, we did not use our guns" (we respect the good feeling of honest Robert and his companions); "but the captain happened to aim at a very large one which sat on the top of a tree, after having fatigued us a long time in pursuing him. This kind of menace, however, of which the animal perhaps recollected his having sometimes seen the consequences, terrified him to such a degree, that he fell down motionless at our feet, and we had no difficulty in seizing him. But whenever he recovered from his stupor it required all our dexterity and efforts to keep him. We tied his paws together; but he bit so furiously that we were under the necessity of covering his head with our handkerchiefs." Indeed, those who have only seen these agile creatures in menageries or in a reclaimed state can have no idea of the wild activity of the tribe in their native woods. Swinging and leaping from tree to tree, ever on the hunt for fruits and birds' nests-they are most unconscionable plunderers of eggs--they lead a merry life, which is, however, often cut short by those mighty snakes that frequently lie in ambush near their careless, unsuspecting prey. These serpents are the greatest enemies of the monkeys, with the exception of the common persecutor-man. He, indeed, is sometimes touched by compunctious visitings, when it is too late. "Seeing me," says a South American traveller, speaking of a monkey, "nearly on the bank of the river in a canoe, the creature made a halt from skipping after his companions, and, being perched on a branch that hung over the water, examined me with attention and the strongest marks of curiosity, no doubt taking me for a giant of his own species, while he chattered prodigiously, and kept dancing and shaking the bough on which he rested with incredible strength and agility. At this time I laid my piece to my shoulder, and brought him down from the tree into the stream; but may I never again be witness to such a scene! The miserable animal was not dead, but mortally wounded. I seized him by the tail, and taking him in both my hands to end his torments, swung him round and hit his head against the side of the canoe; but the poor creature still continuing alive, and looking at me in the most affecting manner that can be conceived, I knew no other means of ending his murder than to hold him under the water till he was drowned, while my heart sickened on his account, for his dying little eyes still continued to follow me with seeming reproach, till their light gradually forsook them, and the wretched animal expired. I felt so much on this occasion that I could neither taste of him nor his companions when they were dressed, though I saw that they afforded to some others a delicious repast." The repentant writer and his party were driven to the commission of the act for want of fresh provisions; and many of the family are considered most excellent eating-by those who can get over the appearance of the animal and of its bones when cooked. There are not many, however, who can sit down to a dish of monkeys without feeling that it is rather a cannibalish proceeding. It will be obvious, when the leafy home of this restless race is considered, that it is of the utmost consequence that the infantmonkey should be protected as much as possible from a fall. Accordingly, the prevailing instinct of a young one is, in sailor's language, to hold on. It clings to its mother with the greatest tenacity; and, to enable it to do this, considerable strength is thrown into the extremities, the anterior limbs especially. Le Vaillant, in his introduction to his first voyage, gives the following curious instance of the exhibition of this instinct under extraordinary circumstances. When living in Dutch Guiana at Paramaribo, where he was born, and where he had already, though very young, formed a collection of insects, the future traveller and his party in one of their excursions had killed a female monkey : "As she carried on her back a young one, which had not been wounded, we took them both along with us; and when we returned to the plantation, my ape had not quitted the shoulders of its mother. It clung so closely to them, that I was obliged to have the assistance of a negro to disengage them; but scarcely was it separated from her, when, like a bird, it darted upon a wooden block that stood near, covered with my father's peruke, which it embraced with its four paws, nor could it be compelled to quit its position. Deceived by its instinct, it still imagined itself to be on the back of its mother, and under her protection. As it seemed perfectly at ease on the peruke, I resolved to suffer it to remain, and to feed it there with goat's milk. It continued in its error for three weeks, but after that period, emancipating itself from its own authority, it quitted the fostering peruke, and by its amusing tricks became the friend and favourite of the whole family." Though it is difficult to suppress a smile at the idea of a monkey clinging to a full-bottom on a wig-block and fancying it its mamma, the story, as it begins mournfully with the slaughter of the poor mother, ends tragically for her unhappy offspring: it died a terrible death,-the result, indeed, of its own mischievous voracity, but in agonies frightful to think of : "I had, however," continues Le Vaillant, "without suspecting it, introduced the wolf among my flocks. One morning, on entering my chamber, the door of which I had been so imprudent as to leave open, I beheld my unworthy pupil making a hearty breakfast on my noble collection. In the first transports of my passion I resolved to strangle it in my arms; but rage and fury |