It may perhaps seem strange to many readers that instead of leaving the apes and monkeys to the last, as standing at the head of the animal kingdom, we should bring them in now, directly after such lowly creatures as hedgehogs and mice, bats and beavers. It must, however, be repeatedly borne in mind that we are not following a direct line upwards, but a family tree, which branches in all directions; and though the gap between monkeys and insectivora may be great, yet they have many more points in common than the monkeys have with any of the vegetable-feeders or carnivorous animals, and probably we should find these links even more marked if it were not that we know so very little of the early history of Monkeys. The reason of this probably is that they live and die in woods, where any remains of their bodies not eaten by other animals decay and crumble to dust, so that we have only here and there a few skeletons to tell any tale of their ancestors. And so it comes to pass that when we first meet with the great army of milk-givers (see p. 209), lemurs, and soon after true monkeys, existed, with thumbs on their hands and grasping great toes on their feet.

In those times, when the climate of Europe and North America was warm and genial, they spread far and wide with the other animals over Germany, England, and the United States, where forests of palms, fig-trees, and evergreens afforded them a congenial home. But as soon as these began to fail and the climate of the northern countries became cold and cheerless, we find the monkey-kingdom growing narrower and narrower, till in our own day, while the flesh-feeders range from the Arctic Circle to the Equator, and the vegetarians have their reindeers travelling over ice and snow on the one hand, and their hippopotamuses and giraffes wandering under the burning sun of Africa on the other, the tender monkeys, which shiver in cold and damp and are constant victims to consumption, have shrunk back into the Tropics, where there is abundance of fruit and vegetation for their food. It is true a few kinds still linger in Japan, and one151 on the sunny Rock of Gibraltar, while one or two wander up the mountains of Tibet into the regions of frost and snow; but, on the whole, monkeys are essentially inhabitants of warm countries, where the trees are perpetually covered with leaves and fruit, as in the luxuriant forests of South Asia and Tropical Africa in the Old World, and Tropical America in the New.

Though they have but a narrow kingdom, however, there can be no doubt that they make the most of it, and have managed to develop shrewdness and a sense of fun and frolic which would be quite unaccountable if it were not for one peculiarity which they possess. This peculiarity is the grasping power of their hands and feet, which has caused them to become such active nimble creatures, swinging, leaping, and running quickly along the boughs of the tangled forests in which they live.

Yet the monkeys do not stand alone in this grasping power, for we have seen that the opossums have hind-thumbs among the pouch-bearers, while among the rodents the little dormouse has a nailless grasping toe-thumb on his hind feet. So that here already we have some clue to possible descendants of poor relations of the monkeys down in the lower forms of life; and when we remember that the colugo (see p. 232) is related on the one hand to marsupials and insect-eaters, while on the other it leans towards the lemurs, and through them to the monkeys, we begin to suspect that somewhere low down in all these groups we might find ourselves among a family party from which all the different branches have sprung; just as we found the birds, reptiles, and milk-givers starting in past ages among the amphibia.

It must, however, be very long ago since the monkeys scrambled to the top of this family tree, for even the Lemurs,—which are not true monkeys, but a lower type with an irregular number of teeth like the insect-eaters, hairy hands and fox-like faces, without any change of expression,—have well-developed thumbs and toe-thumbs, with nails on hands and feet, and they have besides that free movement of the arm and wrist which gives at once an advantage to the Quadrumana152 or four-handed animals.

These lemurs are a gentle and loving race of creatures, which run on all fours like cats, and have none of the mischievous half-reasoning pranks of monkeys. They must have crept down long long ago from the great battlefield of Europe and Asia, and taken refuge in the forests of South Africa and India, and especially in the Island of Madagascar, where they were sheltered from the attacks of larger and fiercer animals. They are splendid climbers, with very sensitive tips to their fingers, which are often of different lengths, and many of them have eyes with pupils which expand and contract like those of a cat, enabling them to see well by day and night, while a quick sense of hearing warns them of any danger near.

In India, indeed, their relations the “Lories” are most of them slow-moving night-loving animals, while in South Africa the “Galagos” sleep all day in a nest of leaves, and are only active at night, crying to each other as they leap from bough to bough, seizing the beetles and moths in their little hands. It was probably from such night-wanderers as these that the general name of “lemurs” or “ghost-like” animals was given to the group, for the true lemurs, which live in Madagascar,—their special home, where they have few enemies,—may be seen by day running along the branches, snatching the fruit, sucking birds’ eggs, and even feeding on the young birds themselves, for they have plenty of crushing teeth, as well as incisors for clipping the leaves. Sometimes they sit in companies, huddled together, wrapping their soft furry tails round each other’s necks, for they are chilly creatures, and even in that warm country their thick tails, which are quite useless for clinging, seem to be a comfort to them. More often they are running and jumping, especially in the evening time, the mothers carrying their naked little ones nestled in the fur of their stomach, or, when they are older, on their backs; and whether slow or quick, day-lovers or night-hunters, these happy thoughtless little beings flourish in the quiet island home they have found, cut off from the struggling world beyond.

And among them at night, when the soft clear moonlight shines down on the thick forests in the interior of the island, comes a small ghost-like animal, the “Aye-Aye,” with wide-staring eyes, furry body, and long bony jointed fingers. He utters a plaintive cry as he creeps from bough to bough, stripping the bark off the trees with his strong chisel-like teeth to find some worm-eaten hole into which he thrusts his skinny fourth finger to pick out a grub, and then moistens his meal by drawing the same long finger rapidly through some watery crevice, and then through his lips for drink. This strange creature too is a kind of lemur, so far as he can be classed at all, with his gnawing teeth, his hind feet like a monkey’s, his large spoon-shaped ears, and his uneven fingered hands, with strong curved claws. At any rate he belongs to no other group, but tells us once more the old story of creatures in isolated countries putting on strange shapes suited to extreme habits of life.

Now between these gentle, but low-brained and dreamy lemurs, and the active, intelligent, mischievous monkeys, there is a great gap. The creatures most like them are the little Marmosets of South America, which run like squirrels among the forest trees of Brazil, feeding on bananas, spiders, and grasshoppers, and making their nests in the topmost boughs. But these marmosets are true monkeys, with expressive faces, and the peculiar wide-spread nostrils which we find in all the monkeys of the New World. For it is to South America, that land of the less advanced forms of life, that we must look for the lower kind of quadrumana, with side-opening nostrils,153 thumbs which move in a line with the fingers of the hand, and not nearly so much across the palm as in the higher apes, and thirty-six teeth in their mouth instead of thirty-two,154 as in man and in the Old World monkeys.

None of these American monkeys ever become so man-like as the Apes of Africa and Asia, but in many ways they bring monkey-life in the trees to greater perfection, in the dense forests of Brazil and Paraguay, and even as far north as Guatemala. The lumbering heavy Gorilla of Africa, though higher in the scale, is a cumbersome fellow compared to the nimble little thumbless Spider monkeys of the Amazons, which hang by their bare tipped tails to the branches and to each other, chattering away like a troop of children as they gather the bananas and other fruits, or catch insects and young birds, or fly screaming with fear from the stealthy puma or the fierce eagle. With the trees for their kingdom, their tail for a fifth hand, and the warm sun to cheer and invigorate them, these spider-monkeys and their quieter friends the Capucine monkeys (often seen on London organs), and the Woolly monkeys (Fig. 65), lead a pleasant life enough, till misfortune or old age overtakes them. Their friends the Howler monkeys, which also have grasping tails, seek the deep recesses of the forest and creep quietly from tree to tree until night comes, when hundreds of them at once will make the woods re-echo with their deep howling cry, which they produce by a special voice-organ in their throat; and with them come out the little Owl monkeys, which sleep by day in the hollows of the trees. These, with the various kinds of Saki monkeys, which cannot cling by their tails, but have fairly good brains and quick intelligence, make up the monkey population of America.

Here, then, we have a whole group of quickwitted tree-monkeys, which, from their structure, we know must have started long ago on a line of their own, wandering down into South America, where they had but few enemies except the boas and pumas and birds of prey, till man came to kill and eat them. And if we wonder how they have gained their quick mischievous intelligence in those quiet pathless forests, we must remember that though a grasping hand and foot seem at first sight of very little importance, yet by means of them the monkey moves rapidly from place to place, swinging, leaping, running, and climbing along the boughs, which are its paths from tree to tree. And since rapid change of any kind makes the eye quick of sight, the ear acute, and the brain active and alive to take in new impressions, it is no wonder that the monkey mind has become alert and ready during the ages that these animals have been chasing and cheating and outwitting each other, or tenderly rearing their young ones among the dangers of the forest.

And now if we turn back to the Old World, it is not so much the smaller active tree-monkeys that interest us, for they live much the same life as their American cousins, although they differ from them in never having grasping tails, in having thirty-two teeth like man, in the openings of their nostrils which turn downwards155 like our own, and in having either cheek-pouches to stow away their food, or stomachs with three compartments like animals that chew the cud, so that they can keep a store within. But in spite of these differences they appear outwardly much the same as the American monkeys; they leap and jump among the trees, and it is not till we come to the Baboons and the tailless man-like apes, that we find ourselves studying quite another kind of life.

Imagine an undulating country of corn-fields and rough vegetation in Abyssinia, or southwards towards the Cape, with long ranges of rocky hills rising up behind, and precipices leading to the narrow defiles of the mountains, and then picture to yourself, descending from those mountains, a troop of two hundred or more large hairy monkeys, with short tails growing from between bare seat-pads, dog-like faces and something of a dog’s shape, as they gallop clumsily along with all four feet flat upon the ground. These are the African Baboons, and they form a goodly company, the chiefs marching first, grand old elders with stout hairy manes to protect them when fighting. These come cautiously, peering over the precipices, and climbing up rocks and stones to survey the country round before allowing the troop to advance; and behind them follow the young males, and the mothers with their children on their backs, shambling down till they reach the fertile grounds, where sentinels are set to watch for danger, while the multitude feed, filling their cheek-pouches and even storing the corn under their armpits. Then when all are satisfied, if no alarm has been given they wander slowly back, resting by the way to chew their food or drink at some mountain stream, but never leaving the company till they are safe back under the rocky ledges of the steep hillside, where they make their home.156

For these baboons, unlike other monkeys, live in hilly rocky places, and not in forests, and therefore they are in much more danger from wild beasts, especially the leopard, so that they rarely venture abroad except in company, and lead an extremely gregarious life. Yet though they run on all fours, and look less human than most monkeys, even the lowest baboon, the Mandrill (easily known by the coloured swellings on its cheeks and hind quarters), which has many points in its skeleton like four-footed animals, has true thumbs on its hands and toe-thumbs on its feet, and uses them to lift up stones to search for scorpions and other insects; while the mother baboons dandle their little ones, or give them a box on the ear when troublesome, in true human fashion.

Moreover, they have developed great intelligence in their social life, and the youngsters are soon taught to keep silence when danger is near, to follow their leader, and to obey the sign of command; while, in their turn, the leaders will defend the weak and feeble of the troop, as in the well-known case of the brave old baboon who came down alone in the face of the dogs to fetch away a little one only six months old, which had been left behind crying for help.

Still, notwithstanding their cleverness and courage, these baboons, with their long hind legs and dog-like faces, running on all fours, travelling in troops, and feeding in the corn-fields and meadows, remind us more of four-footed animals than any other of the monkey tribe, and we must turn again to dense forests and tangled jungles to find those large and tailless apes which have risen highest in monkey life.

If we go back in imagination to those days when the wild beasts of the forests, the strong elephants and rhinoceroses, the fierce tigers, lions, and leopards, had not yet been persecuted by man, but roamed in great numbers over the whole tropical and temperate world, we can easily imagine that a set of animals which could climb along the tops of the lofty trees in impenetrable forests would have a great advantage, even though elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffaloes were crashing through the underwood below, and the fierce leopard was on the watch for them when they ventured to descend. With their tree-loving life, the monkeys would have every chance of escape, climbing along the topmost boughs with wonderful rapidity, to find refuge in gloomy recesses where they might bring up their young in safety. And as they grew in strength and intelligence, gradually retiring to the thickly wooded part of Southern Asia and tropical Africa, they might even succeed in driving out their opponents, as the Gorilla is said to have driven the elephant from the Gaboon country, because he interfered with the trees which he makes his special home.

So we must go to such tangled virgin forests as those of Sumatra, Borneo, and Malacca, to find the long-armed tailless Gibbons,157 which once wandered over Europe, but now roam no further than Southern Asia, where they swing themselves along from branch to branch by means of their lengthy arms, which are so out of proportion to their legs that when they stand upright they can touch the ground with their knuckles. These gibbons are gentle creatures, with not too much brain, but wonderfully elegant and agile, which is more than can be said for the intelligent Orangutan158 or Mias which wanders in the same forest. He has shorter arms, only reaching to the ankle, and he climbs half upright from tree-top to tree-top, grasping the boughs and swaying slowly onwards, or holds on by his toe-thumbs while he stretches up to the more slender branches to gather the fruit and young buds.

A strange object he looks, a great red, hairy, man-like creature, between four and five feet high, thrusting his huge black face from out of the dense foliage as he devours the Durian and Mangosteen fruits, seated comfortably in a fork of the tree, and then if disturbed he is off far more quickly than you would suppose possible for such a heavy creature, running, climbing, and creeping half upright till he is lost in the forest. He rarely comes down, except to shamble across some open space from one wood to another, or to drink in the river, where the natives say the crocodile attacks him, but he beats him and carries off the victory; while in the trees his only enemy is the python, which tries to encircle him in its coils. Nor does he often wander in company, for Mr. Wallace tells us that he never saw a father and mother orangutan together, though either of them may be seen with the young ones. He seems to lead, on the whole, a solitary life, and when the sun goes down retires into a nest of leaves low down in one of the trees, and sleeps till it is broad daylight and the dew is dried off the leaves.

But, though the orangutan is both strong and cunning, he is not nearly so human as the intelligent and docile Chimpanzee, which shares with the fierce Gorilla the dense forests of palms, amomas, and gigantic tropical trees of Africa, where the grass and brush grow fifteen feet or more high, and the native man scarcely dares to venture for fear of the man-like apes. In these endless African forests there is quite a population of these wild creatures; bald-headed apes which build bowers in the trees; the Soko, a kind of gorilla, which loves to steal the native children, and always defends himself by biting off the fingers or paws of his enemy; the true chimpanzee, so human in its affection and its fun when it is caught and tamed; and the fierce gorilla, between five and six feet high, which rules as master in Western Africa near the equator.

Though each of these tailless apes has its own advantages, yet the gorilla is, on the whole, most advanced and nearest to man in structure. But his legs are still too short and thick, and his arms long, reaching to his knee; and the large projections on the back of his neck bones prevent him throwing his head well back, so that he stoops like a hunchback, while his feet are twisted so that he treads on the outside and not on the sole. His eye-teeth are huge, his eyes deeply sunken, his jaws heavy and strong, but his brain is not one-half the size of that of the lowest races of men, and though it has foldings very like those of the human brain, these are larger and less complex. When he walks it is not upright but on all fours, resting the knuckles of his hand on the ground; but when he is in his natural home—the trees—then his long strong arms and broad naked palmed hands grasp the boughs with immense power, and pull his heavy body upwards as he climbs hand over hand, his twisted toe-thumbed feet clutching the branches below far better than a straight foot could do.

And so he lives with his wife and family in the thick solitary parts of the West African forests, feeding only on fruits and leaves, so that his stomach becomes large and heavy with the amount of food necessary to nourish him. He is more sociable than the orangutan, for several will travel together, but he asks for no shelter beyond the trees and the nest of leaves, which is his home and the cradle of his young ones, nor does he seem to attack other animals except in self-defence, and then his gigantic strength and his formidable teeth are his chief weapons, and woe betide the creature that comes within his grasp.

It is strange to picture to ourselves these huge apes, living in the depths of lonely forests and looking like human savages to those who can catch a glimpse of them, so that the ancient Carthaginians landing on the shores took them for “wild men” and “hairy women.” We know very little of their daily life, for they are seldom seen except by those who hunt them, and who have but little chance of watching their habits. But all that we do know teaches us that in their rough way they have developed into strangely man-like though savage creatures, while at the same time they are so brutal and so limited in their intelligence that we cannot but look upon them as degenerate animals, equal neither in beauty, strength, discernment, nor in any of the nobler qualities, to the faithful dog, the courageous lion, or the half-reasoning elephant.