The other species distinguished by M. Du Chaillu[176] is the Kooloo-Kamba. He is distinguished from all his congeners by a very peculiar cry. While offering a general resemblance to man, he approaches him more nearly in certain respects than all the other known apes. His head is very remarkable, and presents a curious analogy to that of an Esquimaux or a Chinese. His face is hairless, and wholly black. The forehead is loftier than that of any of his congeners, and the capacity of his skull is also greater in proportion to his height. A wider space occurs between his eyes than is customary with the great Simiadæ. He has a flattened nose, high projecting cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, and a well-marked orbitary arch. The muzzle is less prominent, and larger in proportion than that of other apes. Both sides of his face are ornamented with straight tufts of hair, which, joining below the chin like whiskers, communicate a strange human character to the whole countenance. His arms descend below his knees. All the body is hairy. The shoulders are broad, the hands long and narrow, and well adapted for climbing trees. Both arm and hand are exceedingly muscular; the abdomen is very prominent. The ample ears rather resemble those of a man than the ears of any other ape.
Our peregrinations now bring us to the giant of the Quadrumana, the true king of the forests of Equatorial Africa; in a word, to the Gorilla, whom Buffon has described under the name of Pongo, almost as exactly as he pictured the Chimpanzee under that of Jacko.
We cannot be said to have known the Gorilla for more than a quarter of a century.
It was in 1847 that Dr. Savage, an American missionary, recognized the Pongo as a species of the genus Troglodytes, distinct from the Chimpanzee, and named him Troglodytes Gorilla, in allusion to the celebrated narrative of the Carthaginian Hanno relative to the pretended female Gorillas which that navigator professed to have seen in an island of the Gulf of Guinea. Since that period the Gorilla has been carefully studied by the eminent naturalist Professor Owen. Messieurs Gautier and Franquet, French naval surgeons, collected some important information upon the habits and physiology of this great ape, and M. Franquet procured for the Paris Museum the skeleton of an adult Gorilla. Other dead and preserved specimens have since been imported into England and France, and the anatomy of this African Troglodytes is accurately known. And, finally, M. Du Chaillu, in the work already quoted, has supplied numerous strange and interesting details, which, if at first discredited and contested, are now very generally accepted as strictly accurate.
The name of “Pongo,” applied to the Gorilla by Battel and Buffon, is clearly a modification or corruption of that of the tribe of Mpongwéss, who dwell on the banks of the Gaboon, not far from the forests tenanted by this mysterious Quadrumane.
The Mpongwéss negroes call the Chimpanzee Enge-eko, and the Gorilla Enge-ena; whence the surname of “Gina,” linked to the zoological appellation of “Gorilla”—Gorilla-Gina.
The Gorilla appears to be confined in the dense wooded regions of Lower Guinea, where he shuns, and, if needs be, repels the approach of man and that of the carnivorous animals, as well as of all those who attempt to penetrate into his retreats. Fierce and savage is he in his every custom; but it has never been satisfactorily demonstrated that he acts on the aggressive. He is not the less an object of extreme terror to his negro neighbours, on account of his extraordinary strength; and much more, perhaps, owing to the fantastic legends that have grown up about his name. His stature exceeds four, and sometimes attains, it is said, to upwards of six feet. The most salient characteristics of his head are the great width and elongation of the face, the development of the lower jaw, and the smallness of the osseous framework, which surrounded by a very elevated orbitary arch, whence proceeds a second ridge dominating over all the upper part of the skull. The nose is flat, the eye deep-sunken in its orbit, the ear small, the mouth very large. The lips, especially the lower one, are long and very extensible. The expression of the face is terrible, reminding one of Coleridge’s painful picture of a man-monster; and especially terrible when the animal raises the shaggy skin, and reveals the enormous fangs which bristle in his jaws.
His neck is thick, and so short, that the head seems grafted directly upon the shoulders. The latter are of formidable breadth, and his vast chest resounds like a drum when he beats it with his powerful fists, raising himself upright on his feet—an action which is with him a sign of mistrust, hatred, and indignation. He has a large expanded belly, like that of the orang and chimpanzee. His skin is of a deep black, naked on the face and on the palm of the hands, but elsewhere clothed with a rough iron-gray or brown-black hair.
The breast of the male adult is hairless, like that of the female. With the former the hair of the back is worn off, owing to his habit of sleeping on the ground supported against a tree. This peculiarity, according to M. Du Chaillu, is only seen in the female when she has attained an advanced age, in which case it would seem to be owing to the fact that, having no longer her infants to shelter among the branches, she sleeps in the same fashion as the male.
The natural walk of the Gorilla is not upon two feet, but upon four paws. In this posture, owing to the length of his arms, his head and chest are much elevated. When he runs, his hind-legs are brought up under the body. The arm and the leg on the same side move simultaneously, which gives the animal a curious and awkward gait. He runs, however, with extreme swiftness.
Despite the strength of his jaws, despite his enormous canine teeth, the Gorilla is exclusively frugivorous; but as he stands in need of abundant nourishment, he is compelled to change his quarters incessantly. His habits, therefore, are essentially nomadic. He is not gregarious. M. Du Chaillu affirms that he has never seen but a couple of adults together, the male and the female; sometimes an aged male wanders about alone. Of the young, as many as five will occasionally be found in company. It is a difficult matter to approach them, for their hearing is very keen, and when alarmed they immediately take to flight, while the nature of the ground embarrasses the hunter in his pursuit.
Every hunter who understands his métier will reserve his fire, when chasing the Gorilla, until the last moment. Whether the furious beast takes the report for a threatening defiance, or from some other unknown cause, if the hunter fires and misses, the Gorilla immediately pounces upon him, and no one can withstand the force of his attack. A single blow of his enormous foot, armed as it is with most formidable claws, eviscerates a man, smashes in his chest, or batters his skull. Negroes in a like situation have been seen, reduced to despair by terror, to turn upon the Gorilla and aim at him their discharged musket; but they have not even the time to level an inoffensive blow; the arm of their antagonist falls upon them with all its weight, shattering at once both arm and gun. I know of no animal whose attack is so fatal to man, for the reason that he dares to confront him face to face, with his arms for weapons of offence, exactly like a boxer, with the exception that he has the advantage of longer arms, and a vigour far surpassing that of any athlete who has ever claimed the suffrages of the ring. Fortunately, the Gorilla dies as easily as a man. A blow in the chest, if well-directed, immediately lays him low. He falls forward on his face, his arms widely extended, and heaving with his last breath a frightful dying cry, half roar, half wail, which though a signal of safety for the hunter, nevertheless resounds painfully in his ear, like the supreme utterance of human agony.[177]
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A GORILLA KILLING A NEGRO.
A GORILLA KILLING A NEGRO.
The negroes of the Gaboon are generally very partial to the flesh of the Gorilla, as well as to that of the other great apes, although it is, in sooth, of a leathery character. This partiality need not surprise us on the part of a race which too frequently indulge in a horrible banquet off their own kind. It has been observed that those tribes which are not cannibal do not share the liking of their neighbours for the flesh of the Gorilla or the Chimpanzee; many even shrink from it with peculiar horror, on account of the kinship existing, as they believe, between these apes and man,—and the superstitious creed which represent these animals as supernatural beings, whose bodies are the refuge of the souls of their relatives, or of their friends, labouring for their crimes under an eternal curse!
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THE Ancient Continent possesses, in addition to the great apes of which I have already spoken, the Macaucos, the Cynocephali, and the Anthropomorphes, other apes of more erect, and one might even say more elegant figures, essentially climbers, and provided with a long, but not prehensile tail. Such are the Semnopitheci and the Monkeys of the African forests, of India and Indo-China, of Japan and the Indian Archipelago. These two latter groups approximate, by their external forms, to the apes of the New World; divided by Buffon into Sagouins and Sapajous, but re-united in the new classification of naturalists under one single family, named Cebidæ. These—one genus, the Brachiura, excepted—have all a very long, and, generally, a prehensile tail. They differ, moreover, from the Simidæ of the Old World in the disposition of their nostrils, which are always open laterally, and separated by a thick depressed membrane; in such wise, that it might also be affirmed they were gifted with two noses! By nature they are of a gentle and placable disposition, readily domesticate themselves with man, and do not become in their old age more impracticable or malicious than in youth.
The Cebidæ are divided into several genera, such as the Howlers, the Atelæ, the Sajous, the Saïmris, the Nyctipitheci, or Nocturnal Apes; to which we may add, perhaps, the tribe of the Hapalidæ (Ouistitis and Tamarins).
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Howling Monkeys.
Howling Monkeys.
To the Howling Monkeys we have found it convenient to refer in a preceding chapter, and it is almost needless to remind the reader that they owe their distinctive name to their habit of assembling in the woods, and startling the echoes with a chorus of unearthly noises. They chiefly inhabit New Grenada, Guiana, Brazil, and Paraguay, where, night and morning, their discordant orchestra strikes terror to the soul of the unaccustomed traveller.
I have already said that the tail of nearly all the American Cebidæ is long and prehensile; that is, endowed with a peculiar faculty of winding or clinging round any object.
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Ateles crossing a River.
Ateles crossing a River.
In the genus Ateles, or “Spider Monkey,” for example, it virtually forms a fifth limb, by whose agency the animal suspends himself in the air, and darts from one tree to another with more than the agility of a Leotard. It amply compensates for the imperfection with which Nature has afflicted him by leaving his fore-paws deprived of thumbs. He owes his popular designation of the Spider Monkey to his long slender limbs and sprawling gestures. In the colour of his skin, his methodical slowness, and the suppleness of his movements, he resembles the gibbons. Of all animals he alone has the biceps of the thigh resembling that of man. He is fond of the society of his kind, and mainly subsists on insects, small fish, and molluscs, which he catches with all the address of a practised angler. Travellers affirm that he frequently crosses the wide American rivers without descending to the ground. He and his comrades form a living chain, which hangs suspended from a lofty branch, and, by a series of more or less nimble movements, succeeds in hooking itself on to a tree on the other side. This chain serves at first as a flying bridge for the whole troop; then it accomplishes its own passage, by detaching itself from its point of suspension to fall back on the opposite bank. The tale, however, has an improbable air about it, which makes a large demand on the reader’s belief.
It is from South America, and notably from Brazil and Guiana, that we import into Europe the apes most valued by our itinerant mountebanks and by zoological amateurs, on account of their gentleness, their domesticity, their intelligence, and their singular instinct of imitation—almost amounting to genius—which renders them wonderfully apt in the performance of all kinds of tricks and amusing exercises. Nearly all these apes belong to the very numerous genus of Sajous, or Sapajous.
Thus we have the Squirrel Monkey (Callithrix sciurus), not much larger than the animal whose name he bears, and infinitely more nimble and diverting. He is of a bright golden yellow colour, with feet and hands of a deeper yellow. His head is round, with a blackish nose, and hairy ears. His tail is very long, and tipped with black. The nails of his hands are flat, while those of his feet resemble claws.
The Ouistitis, which are frequently imported into Europe, are very pretty animals, clad in a soft kind of fur, and with their ears ornamented by long brush-like tufts of black or white hairs. They are very easily tamed, are mild and intelligent, and, owing to their small size, conveniently kept in apartments; but they do not acclimatize in Europe, and, even if they survive the voyage, die very shortly after their arrival.
Linné has given the name of Lemurs, which modern naturalists have also adopted, to a race of quadrumanous animals approximating in many particulars to the Monkey tribe, but forming, nevertheless, a perfectly distinct zoological family. It comprises five genera: one, that of the Galagos, belongs to Africa; two inhabit India and the neighbouring islands—namely, the Loris and the Tarsii; and, finally, two others, the Makis and the Indris, are exclusively confined to Madagascar, where they occupy the same position as the Apes properly so called on the continent.
The Galagos are distinguished by their great eyes, their large membranous ears, which double down when the animal is at rest, their extraordinary long hind limbs, and their long and tufted tail. In size they vary from that of a rat to that of a rabbit. The Senegal Galagos, or Gum animals of Senegal (Galago Senegalensis), have, at night, all the activity of birds, hopping from bough to bough on their hind limbs only. They watch the insects flitting among the leaves, listen to the fluttering moth as it darts through the air, and leap upon it with arrow-like rapidity, seldom missing their prize, which is caught by the hands. Their nests are made in the branches of the trees, and they cover a bed for their young with grass and leaves.
What shall I say of the Loris? Two species only are known, and both are natives of the East Indian world: the Short-limbed Loris (Lemur tardigradus), and the Slender Loris (Lemur gracilis), the latter being readily recognized by the disproportionate length of his limbs, and, especially, of his fore-arms. They live in the trees; feeding on insects, or, as a relish, on small birds and quadrupeds; and going forth at night in search of their prey. They have a short muzzle, slender body, no tail, rough tongue, and large staring eyes, placed very near each other. Their ears are short, scarcely rising through the hair in which they are embedded; the nostrils project beyond the mouth, and are surrounded by a naked muzzle; and the thumbs are widely separated from the fingers, both on the fore and hinder hands.
Of the Tarsii it is enough to say that they are insectivorous, like the loris, and that their hind limbs are similarly disproportionate. The tail is long and tufted; the large, fixed, glaring eyes mark them out as addicted to nocturnal habits. They leap about two feet at a spring, and by day conceal themselves under the roots of trees. Two species are distinguished: the Tarsius fuscomanus of Fischer, and the Tarsius bancanus of Horsfield.
The Makis approach the nearest of all the Lemuridæ to the superior Quadrumana. They have, however, like their congeners, opposite fingers on the hind feet. The Short-tailed Indri bears even some slight resemblance to man, in the shortness of his tail, the length of his legs, and his altitude. The Malagasy call him the “Man of the Woods,” although he has a pointed muzzle and trumpet-shaped ears on the summit of the head. He is the largest of the Lemuridæ, attaining, when erect, the height of three feet. His skin is soft, and clothed in long fine hair; whence naturalists have named him Indris laniger. Very gentle in disposition, he is easily tamed, although endowed with only moderate intelligence. It is said that he can be trained to the chase.
The Maki, like the Short-tailed Indri, has a thin elongated muzzle; otherwise, in form, he approximates more closely to the Ratans or the Coatis than to the Apes. Their ears are small and round, lateral, and almost entirely hidden in the hair; they carry a tail of notable length; their fur is thick and soft. The thumb of their anterior paws is nearly as “opposable” as that of the posterior. To sum up: they are graceful little animals, precisely because we do not find in them those grotesque features and that eccentric conformation which render the apes, even the most favoured by Nature, offensive caricatures of man. They are lively and agile; they climb, run, and leap with as much grace as nimbleness. Their habits are nocturnal, as the development of their eyes sufficiently indicates. They subsist on fruits and insects. Their manners are gentle; they accustom themselves to captivity with great readiness, and soon grow familiar; but they do not equal the apes in intelligence. This genus comprehends several species. I shall specify the Maki-Mocoas, which is of a cindery-gray, with the cheeks and throat white, and the tail marked with regular black rings; the White-Mantled Maki, whose muzzle, shoulders, and tail are black, and the rest of the body of a pure white; the Red Maki, very remarkable for the brightness of his colours, for his body is of a lively red, the upper part of his neck and head white, as well as the extremities of his legs; and, finally, his belly and tail are black. Other species have been distinguished, as the Red-bellied Maki, the Yellow-bellied, the Maki with the white forehead, and the like.
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1. Maki-Mocoas. 2. White-Mantled Maki.
1. Maki-Mocoas. 2. White-Mantled Maki.
To the Fauna of the Madagascar forests also belongs an extremely rare animal, few specimens of which have been brought into Europe. After some hesitation our naturalists have agreed to refer it to the order of Primates, although its general appearance and its system of dentition caused it at first to be taken for a kind of large squirrel; while, on the other hand, the form and disposition of its thin fingers, and the development of its nails, liken it to the sloths. This animal is the Aye-Aye, or Cheiromys Madagascariensis. The characters which have determined its annexations to the order of Primates are, principally, the presence of opposable thumbs on the hind-paws; the terminal position of the nostrils; the oblique direction of the eyes, and the absence of a vertical fissure on the upper lip. Its habits are not well known; but it is a burrowing animal, very slothful, and goes abroad at night. It has large flat ears, like a bat’s, and a tail like a squirrel’s; but its peculiarity is the middle toe or finger of the fore-foot, whose two last joints are very long, slender, and destitute of hair. From nose to tail it measures about eighteen inches, and its general colour is a pale ferruginous brown, mixed with gray.
Sonnerat, who discovered the aye-aye in his expedition to Madagascar, at the close of the last century, succeeded in obtaining a couple of specimens, which he kept alive for two months. “I nourished them,” he says, “upon cooked rice, and they make use, in eating, of the thin fingers of their fore-feet, just as the Chinese do of their chopsticks. They seemed always drowsy, resting with the head placed between the fore-paws, and it was only by shaking them several times we could get them to move.” This torpid condition, however, was it the effect of confinement or of natural apathy? If due to the latter, it would be another point of approximation between the aye-aye and the sloths, which some naturalists have also inclined to rank among the Primates.
Other authors have placed those latter quadrupeds in an order apart, under the name of “Tardigrades;” but most scientific zoologists now classify them with the Edentata, and form them into the family of Bradypes or Bradypidæ. Undoubtedly the sloth, or aï, is an animal of curious and uncouth appearance; in general conformation not unlike the bear, to which he also approaches in the form of his head, and in deficiency of tail, while his long rough hair, coarse and shaggy, like dry withered grass, recalls the fur of the ant-eater. The most singular peculiarity of his organization is the structure of the feet, whose strong crooked claws, to the number of three or more in each limb, are so linked together that they cannot be moved separately.
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Cheiromys, or Aye-Aye of Madagascar.
Cheiromys, or Aye-Aye of Madagascar.
The name of “Sloth” popularly bestowed on this animal is not so well-deserved as some writers of Zoology made Easy have represented. It is true that his progress on the ground is made with difficulty and slowness; but in the trees, his customary sojourn, he displays considerable address, and transports himself easily from tree to tree. “He moves suspended from the branch,” says Waterton, “he rests suspended from the branch, and he sleeps suspended from the branch. Hence his seemingly bungled composition is at once accounted for; and in lieu of the sloth leading a painful life, and entailing a miserable existence upon his progeny, it is but fair to conclude that he just enjoys life as much as any other animal, and that his extraordinary formation and singular habits are but further proofs to engage us to admire the wonderful works of Omnipotence.”
Dr. Lund says of the Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus torquatus) that he climbs with remarkable sureness and aptitude. The manner in which he moves is thus:—Lying on his belly, with all his four extremities stretched out from his body, he first presses one of his hind-feet with all its might against the ground, whereby the corresponding side of the body is slightly raised. The fore-leg on the same side thus becomes sufficiently free for the animal to move it a little in advance. He then hooks his powerful claws fast in the earth, and so drags his body a little onwards. The same manœuvre is next repeated on the opposite side; and thus the poor animal progresses in the slowest and most laborious manner. But though his organization unfits him for terrestrial locomotion, it is wonderfully adapted, as I have said, to climbing trees. With his long arms he reaches high up, and clings fast to the bough with crooked claws. The inverted position of the soles of his hind-feet gives him a power of clutching the trunk of the tree which no other mammal possesses; so that truly when we see him climbing a tree, we can scarcely believe it to be the same animal that lies so helpless on the ground. Hence we see that the sloth’s organization is wholly adapted for living in trees. Compared with the slowness of his motions, he is the best climber among mammals, while he is the worst walker; or rather, he is the only mammal that can neither walk nor stand.
The Bradypes family is peculiar to South America. It includes but two genera, whose types are the Chalypus-Unau and the Bradypus-Ai. The Unau, or Two-toed Sloth, is found in the forests of Peru, Guiana, and Columbia. His length is from twenty to thirty inches. He has a large head; long and dry hair, of a grayish-brown. During the day he sees very imperfectly, and therefore passes most of his time asleep upon a tree, where he may be seen clinging by three of his feet to a bough, and making use of the fourth to reach and convey to his mouth the food on which he lives. The Aï is more indolent in his habits than the Unau, from which he differs rather in his anatomical and osteological characteristics than in his aspect and conformation. He may, however, be recognized by his rudimentary tail, his flattened visage, and the long frizzled hair which covers certain parts of the body.
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1. Aï (Two-toed Sloth). 2. Unau (Three-toed Sloth).
1. Aï (Two-toed Sloth). 2. Unau (Three-toed Sloth).
We have seen that the aye-aye may be considered as connecting the Quadrumana with the Bradypes, on the one hand, and the squirrels on the other. These two groups, however, exhibit a very striking contrast between their habits and disposition; and since to animals of the former the name has been given of “Sloths,” the latter might justly be designated “the Active.” If there exist, indeed, any animals for whom movement is a vital necessity, these, assuredly, are the squirrels. They climb trees with great agility, and leap from one branch to another with a marvellous vigour and precision. On the ground, they trot rather than run. They are essentially graminivorous and frugivorous; nuts, fruits, seeds, the young stems of trees, forming their chief nourishment, though at times they plunder birds’ nests, and regale themselves with the eggs or even the “callow brood.”
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Common European Squirrels.
Common European Squirrels.
The Squirrel (Sciurus) belongs to the family Sciuridæ, in the order Rodentia. Their special characteristics may be enumerated as a long bushy tail, generally carried curved over the body, whence the Greek name Skiouros (σκια, a shade, and ουρα, a tail), fore-paws furnished with four toes, which have curved claws, and a tubercular thumb; long hind-legs, the feet provided with five toes; two incisors in each jaw; and four molar teeth on each side of each jaw, simple, with tuberculous crowns, and a fifth in front of the upper jaw, which soon falls out. The squirrel’s fur, thick and soft, is of a bright reddish-brown colour, more or less varied with gray; with a snow-white belly and breast, and a tail brown, or almost black. The ears are ornamented with long tufts of hair. The eyes, directed laterally, are black and lively, shining with subdued mischief; the legs are short and muscular; and when on the ground the animal moves by a succession of leaps, the tail being undulating and extended. He lives constantly in the forest, selecting a particular tree, where he builds his nest, either in a hollow of the trunk or among the branches. In the latter case he builds himself a sort of cabin, with twigs and stems, artfully concealed beneath a covering of moss and fragments of bark. There he lives “by his ain fireside,” in the company of his mate and their young ones, collecting an abundant magazine of nuts and acorns for their winter provision. In the spring and summer he loves to gambol among the leafy boughs, climbing up and down the forest trees, and uttering a short quick stuccato cry, like the sound which we produce by clacking the tongue against the palate. If you attempt to seize him, he bites sharply, and scratches like a cat. He is nevertheless easily tamed, and his engaging manners, his amusing gambols, and constant liveliness, make him a great favourite among our “domestic pets.” He soon grows accustomed to his cage, and after a brief interval of liberty returns to it of his own accord.
The Common Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) is found all over Europe, North America, and the Northern and Temperate regions of Asia. He is about eight inches and a-half in length, without the tail, which measures fully six inches long. In Lapland and Sweden his colour changes to gray in the winter season; in the snowy wastes of Siberia, he is frequently seen of a pure white.
The only other European species is the Alpine Squirrel (Sciurus Alpinus), a native of the Alps and Pyrenees, of a deep brown colour, speckled with yellowish-white.
To North America belongs the Gray Squirrel (Sciurus Carolinensis), where he enjoys his free and sportive life in the great forests of hickory, oak, maple, and chestnut. His whole length, including the tail, is about two feet. As he forays plentifully among the corn-fields, the inhabitants regard him as a scourge, and wage deadly war against him. Like the lemming, he migrates about autumn, in immense hosts; advancing in a straight course, which no obstacle is permitted to interrupt, and spreading desolation, like the course of an invading army.
The large species of the Fox Squirrel (Sciurus vulpinus) belongs exclusively to the “murmurous pine-woods” of South America. The Cat Squirrel (Sciurus cinereus) is remarkable for the exquisite fineness of his fur. In the neighbourhood of Hudson’s Bay dwells the Red or Hudson’s Bay Squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius), marked along the middle of the back by a ferruginous line from head to tail, with the belly of a pale ash-colour, mottled with black.
In the northern districts of Africa we meet with the Barbary Squirrel (Sciurus getulus), which dwells among the palm-trees, and is of a grayish-brown colour, lightly shaded with red, with two white longitudinal bands separated by a brown streak. Cross to the eastern coast, and there we find the Abyssinian Squirrel, which has a greenish-gray back, white belly, and tail ringed with black and white; on the western side, the Ivory-eating Squirrel, which nibbles the tusks of elephants killed by hunters; and the Kendo Squirrel, one of the smallest known. The two latter species were discovered and specified by M. Du Chaillu, who has named the former Sciurus eborivorus, and the latter Sciurus minutus.
Among the Indian Squirrels I may name the great Malabar Squirrel (Sciurus maximus), less remarkable for his size, which is more than double that of the European Squirrel, than for the variety and vivacity of his colours. On the upper part of the head, the flanks, and thighs are of a chestnut purple; the shoulders, hind-quarters, and tail of a glossy black; the belly and inner sides of the limbs, a pale yellow.
Zoologists have classified in two genera, distinct from the true Squirrels, under the names of Pteromys and Sciuroptera, the animals popularly called “Flying Squirrels.” The first of these genera is proper to Southern Asia; the second comprehends the species common to Asia and Eastern Europe, others which are exclusively Asiatic, and others which are only met with in North America.
These Sciuridæ have no wings and no capacity of flight; but their anterior and posterior limbs are connected on either side by a membrane, which is really nothing but a fold of skin, and which they extend by spreading out their paws so as to present to the air a considerable surface. By means of this kind of parachute, they can cross, by leaping from one tree to another, an extensive area. My space only permits me to allude to the Virginian Flying Squirrel (Pteromys volucella), and the Common Flying Squirrel (Pteromys volans). The former is about five inches long, with a tail four inches; of a subferruginous brown colour above, and a yellowish-white beneath; the edges of the flying membrane are of a deeper tint than the rest of the fur, contrasting with the white border of the under part. He is naturally of a gregarious disposition, and ten or twelve may be seen in company, flying from tree to tree. In case of need he can swim like other quadrupeds, and yet, on quitting the water, can resume his aërial motion. He feeds on fruits, nuts, and young leaves and twigs; is of an affectionate nature, and easily domesticated.
The Common Flying Squirrel (Pteromys volans) belongs to the northernmost regions, and his favourite haunt is the pine and birch woods of Siberia. On the upper parts his colour is a pale gray, on the under a milky white. Measured from the nose to the tail, his length is six inches; and the tail, which is thickly furred and slightly flattened, is somewhat shorter than the body. He flies, or rather springs, through the agency of an expansile furry membrane, reaching, as I have stated, from the fore-feet to the hind. He builds his nest of the finest mosses in the hollows of the old forest trees; is a solitary animal emerging from his retreat only at the approach of the gloaming; feeds on young buds and catkins; and springs from one tree to another with astonishing velocity.
The Pteromys splendens belongs to Java and Borneo: his body is clothed in fur of a warm red hue. The Sciuroptera Polatouche, which inhabits the north of Europe and Asia, is of an ashen gray on the upper, and of a snowy white on the inferior parts.
Some species of Sciuridæ seldom ascend trees, but burrow on the ground, and are further distinguished by their possession of cheek-pouches. They form the genus Tamias. The best known is the Chipping Squirrel, Hacker, or Chipmuck (Tamias Lysteri), which abounds in the United States as far north as the fiftieth parallel, and derives his name from his peculiar chipping or cheeping cry, like that of a young chicken. He burrows near the roots of trees, and several squirrels frequently tenant one burrow, where they lay up stores of nuts and grain for winter supply. His length is fully ten inches; the general colour gray, longitudinally striped with yellowish-white and black.
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IN the Steppes and Deserts of Sand we have seen men ignorant and wild, semi-brutalized in manner and tastes, and miserable in condition: some sedentary and peaceful, cultivating with laborious care an ungrateful soil; others, and by far the greater number, nomadic and pastoral in their habits; and others, again, living partly on the product of their herds, partly on the plunder obtained by a life of piracy. But between these races and civilized nations there still exist some analogies of belief, of polity, of social economy. In the sacred codes which fill, for them, the place of our elaborate legal and political systems, lofty precepts of justice and charity, salutary rules of morality and hygiène, mingle with barbarous customs and absurd or superstitious practices. Their religions, founded, like Christianity itself, on the idea of a Divine unity, a God of mercy and punishment, they hold in common with peoples who have left their mark on the history of the world, and to whom, moreover, they are attached by close ties of consanguinity.
Widely different is the man of the Prairies and the Forests, the Savage, who even to our own days has remained plunged in the lowest depths of social, intellectual, and moral development. Differing the one from the other, according to the country which they inhabit, the colour of the skin, the features of the countenance, and sometimes the forms and outlines of the body, savages everywhere approximate very closely in the general character of their instincts, sentiments, and ideas, and represent to us that early condition of humanity from which it has only been elevated by the Divine impulse and for the Divine purposes.
Assuredly it is not these whom Bonald has in view when he defines Man as “an intelligence served by organs;” for with them the respective parts of the mind and the body are inverted, and the first is the very humble servant of the second; its sphere of activity, accordingly, is very much restricted. War, the chase, the coarse pleasures of the banquet, the dance—and what a wild, barbarous, sensual dance it is!—the recital and glorification of the deeds of their ancestors, their nation, and themselves, mingled with marvellous improbabilities which he readily accepts for authentic histories, and finally, gambling—these are the only pleasures of the savage.
The chase is almost his sole means of existence; for he is no shepherd, and still less is he a tiller of the ground. He contents himself with gathering those alimentary substances which Nature spontaneously pours out at his feet; and as, among these, the flesh of animals is that which he prefers, he exerts all his physical faculties, and all the resources of his intelligence, to procure it. He fashions for himself arms; he learns to handle them skilfully, as well as to follow up the scent of the game, to contend with the wild beast in agility or cunning; and he displays in this exercise a courage, a patience, and an ardour augmented by the stimulus of vanity, which prompts every tribe and every individual to claim the crown of superior bravery and the prize of surpassing skill.
From emulation to rivalry, from the chase to the campaign, there is but one step. War, for the savage, is but a more dangerous and a more glorious chase; a chase more productive and more fertile in pleasures than the ordinary chase. Therein his self-love, as well as his fierce sanguinary instincts, can be amply gratified; and he feels a keener delight than in the pursuit of the lion or the tiger. He also derives from it far greater advantages, realizes far more considerable profits; the likeness is moreover all the closer, since he looks upon his vanquished enemy sometimes as a prey, sometimes as a slave or a thing for sale or barter. He may either kill him and eat him, or constrain him to labour for him; or finally sell him for money, or exchange him against other “goods and chattels.” If he does not cut him down on the battle-field, and it should not suit him to let his captive live, he may enjoy the pleasure of varying and multiplying his tortures before he deals the death-blow. Among all savage races no banquet is more eagerly enjoyed than the torture of their prisoners. It is generally round the stake to which the shuddering victims are confined, or their throbbing and bleeding remains, just about to be devoured, that the conquerors execute fantastic dances, and surrender themselves to noisy manifestations of joy, making the air re-echo with their discordant songs and the not less discordant sounds of their rude musical instruments; then after the hideous banquet—accursed as that which Pelops offered to the gods—seated around the glowing embers, and in the midst of the frightful fragments of the feast, they love to recall their achievements in the battle and the chase, or beguile the time with some rude game of chance. Gambling, like war and the chase, seems to be an innate passion with savages; and, sooth to say, it is a vice worthy of them and of their brutalized nature. Rightly does the poet exclaim,—
The “shivering fever” consumes the savage’s very life-blood; he gives himself up to it with unrestrained frenzy, and stakes, upon a throw of the dice, his weapons, his possessions, his women, and even his liberty.
Scarcely less violent is the passion which plunges him into drunkenness. With the fermented juices of various plants he is skilful in compounding intoxicating liquors, though he greatly prefers to these raw preparations the subtle mixtures introduced by Europeans. There is nothing which you cannot obtain from him for a few bottles of rum, of whisky, or brandy. And it is to the shame of our merchants that they do not scruple to stimulate, for their own sordid benefit, this vile passion to the utmost, against which the efforts of all our missionaries have proved almost powerless; so that, in truth, the commerce of the savage with civilized men, far from contributing to raise the former out of their abject, slothful, and degraded condition, has, on the contrary, proved for the majority of them a new source of embrutization and depravity.
Savages have no other literature than the traditions, myths, and marvels to which I have already alluded. They have no written language; and here we are at once provided with a means of distinguishing the wholly savage from the partly civilized races. The reduction of speech to a definite system, the acknowledgment of certain laws and principles as affecting the formation of a language, is the first great step out of barbarism which a barbarous people accomplishes.
Their science is limited to some acquaintance with the properties of the plants which they make use of, either as food, medicine, or poison. Medicine, indeed, as practised by “medicine-men,” priests, or “sorcerers,” consists practically of superstitious formulas, whose object is to expel the “evil spirit” which the savage supposes to be the cause of all his maladies.
The logical faculties are invariably those which in man are developed the most slowly and with the greatest difficulty. But they are also those which constitute the intellectual power of great nations. Without Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, what had been ancient Hellas? Without Bacon, Locke, Newton, and Stuart Mill, what were modern England? Or Italy, without Galileo? And France, without Pascal, Descartes, Diderot, and Montesquieu? And Germany, without Fichte, Hegel, Kant, and Schlegel? The savage, however, possesses these faculties in a purely rudimentary condition. Analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalization, are mental achievements which they cannot accomplish. They show themselves incapable, in fact, of the simplest calculations, of resolving easy arithmetical problems which are no mystery to the infants in our European infant-schools. Their numeration never goes beyond the safe and certain limit of their ten fingers; often they cannot compute above five, three, and even two. The Guarinis employ the expression “one hand” and “two hands” to designate five and ten; other American tribes say “two men” instead of forty, because each man has twenty toes and fingers. Among most of the African negroes, numeration is quinary; it is ternary, or even binary, among the Australian aborigines. The savage knows nothing of art, nor of that feeling for beauty which is the essence of art. If he cultivates music, it is of so discordant a character, and so incongruous a medley of sounds, that no European can listen to it with patience. The gods which they fashion out of wood or clay, and to which they frequently offer human sacrifices, are of the utmost hideousness; and it is with difficulty the spectator can recognize in their rude outlines any likeness, however imperfect, to the models in man or beast which the sculptor has pretended to imitate. The want, or rather the depravation of taste, is shown in the choice of the ornaments with which they decorate their persons; in the tatooings with which they bespatter their bodies; in the unbecoming ornaments of every kind which they suspend to the nose, the lips, the ears, and which render monstrous the visage already ugly enough by nature.
The savage has no “industries” in the sense which we attach to that comprehensive word; the terms “trade,” “business,” “profession,” possess no equivalents in his language. He builds himself a hut, a cabin, or a wigwam; and he fabricates for his use a few indispensable implements, weapons, and utensils. The only profession recognized among savage peoples is that of the priesthood. Priests, indeed, are everywhere found as the teachers and ministers of a religion—if we are willing to bestow that sacred word on an incongruous mass of superstitious practices and beliefs, founded upon some dim idea of the existence of a Supreme Being. And this idea exists, though very faintly and rudely, and mingled with many atrocious or absurd aberrations, among most of the red-skins of North America and the islanders of Polynesia. These races believe in the power of a superior God, whom the former denominate the “Great Spirit,” Kitchi Manitou, and the latter Taoroa or Tangara; as well as in another life, a coarse and sensual immortality, wherein they hope to enjoy the full measure of those animal delights which constitute their ideal of perfect happiness. The conception which the savage forms of his God is, nevertheless, a very poor and imperfect one. He never connects him with his thoughts, his emotions, his moral or intellectual nature; but only with the material world—with the thunder and the lightning, the sunshine and the cloud. “Who is it,” says the Indian, “that causes the rain to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure?” And so the Polynesian employs his priest to propitiate his God with sacrifices when the storm rages; and the African, after a prolonged drought, engages the intercession of his “rain-maker” to obtain the desired showers. It is not a moral and a spiritual, but a material God, of whom the savage conceives, and before whose anger he trembles.
In some regions of South America, and principally in Peru, man worships the sun as his supreme divinity, and it is easy to understand the awe and wonder with which the uncultivated mind would necessarily look upon the orb of day, the master and ruler of the year. With Southey, I find myself ready to exclaim:—