APES AND MONKEYS.
The Forest Life of the Simiæ—Excellent Climbers, Bad Pedestrians—Similitude and Difference between the Human Race and the Ape—The Chimpanzee—Chim in Paris—The Gorilla—The Uran—The Gibbons—The Proboscis Monkey—The Huniman—The Wanderoo—The Cercopithecus—A Plundering Party—Parental Affection of a Cercopithecus—The Maimon—‘Happy Jerry’—The Pig-faced Baboon—The Derryas—Wide Difference between the Monkeys of both Hemispheres—Distinctive Characters of the American Monkeys—The Stentor Monkey—The Spider Monkeys—The Saïmiri—Friendships between various kinds of Monkeys—Nocturnal Monkeys—Squirrel Monkeys—Their Lively Intelligence—The Loris and Makis.
In the midst of tropical vegetation, the Simiæ lead a free forest-life, for which they might well be envied. The green canopy of the woods protects them at every season of the year from the burning rays of a vertical sun, flowers of delicious fragrance embalm the air they breathe, and an endless497 supply of fruits and nuts never allows them to know want, for should the stores near at hand be exhausted, an easy migration to some other district soon restores them to abundance. With an agility far surpassing that with which the sailor ascends the rigging, and climbs even to the giddy top of the highest mast, they leap from bush-rope to bush-rope, and from bough to bough, mocking the tiger-cat and the boa, which are unable to follow them in their rapid evolutions. Formed to live on trees, and not upon the ground, they are as excellent climbers as they are bad pedestrians. Both their fore and hind-feet are shaped as hands, generally with four fingers and a thumb, so that they can seize or grasp a bough with all alike.
Buffon erroneously remarks of the chimpanzee, that he always walks erect, even when carrying a weight; but this ape, as well as the other anthropomorphous simiæ, proves by the slowness and awkwardness of his movements, when by chance he walks upon even ground, that this position is by no means natural to him, or congenial to his organisation. Man alone of all creatures, possesses an upright walk; the ape, on the contrary, always stoops, and not to lose his equilibrium when walking, is obliged to place his hands upon the back of his head, or on his loins. Thus, in his native wilds, he rarely has recourse to this inconvenient mode of progression, and when forced by some chance or other to quit the trees, he leans while walking upon the finger-knuckles of his anterior extremities, a position which in fact, very much resembles walking on all-fours.
It is, indeed, only necessary to compare the long, robust, and muscular arms of the chimpanzee with his weaker and shorter hind-feet, to be at once convinced that he was never intended for walking. But see with, what rapidity, with what power and grace, he moves from branch to branch, his hind-legs serving him only as hold-fasts, while his chief strength is in his arms. The tree is, without all doubt, for him what the earth is for us, the air for the bird, or the water for the fish.
The simiæ of the Old World are all distinguished by the common character of a narrow partition of the nose like that of man, and by the same number of teeth, each jaw being provided with ten grinders, two canine teeth, and four incisors, as in the human race. The large apes, or tailless monkeys, resemble us besides in many other respects, as well in their external498 appearance as in their anatomical structure; and form, as it were, the caricature of man, both by their gestures and by glimpses of a higher intelligence.
Creatures so remarkably endowed have naturally at all times attracted a great share of attention, for if even the lowest links in the chain of animated beings lay claim to our interest, how much more must this be the case with beings whose faculties seem almost to raise them to the rank of our relations. The question how far this similarity extends has naturally given rise to many acute investigations and been differently answered, according as naturalists were more or less inclined to depress man to the level of the ape, or to widen the gulf between them. The former, pointing to the brutality of the lowest savages, would willingly make us believe that we are nothing but an improved edition of the Uran, while the latter cite in favour of their opinion, the incommensurable distance which exists between even the most degraded specimens of humanity and the most perfect quadrumana. Man alone is capable of continually progressive improvement; in him alone each generation inherits the acquirements of its fathers, and transmits the growing treasure to its sons, while the ape, like all other animals, constantly remains at the same point. The lowest savage knows how to make fire; the ape, though he may have seen the operation performed a thousand times, and have enjoyed the genial warmth of the glowing embers, will never learn the simple art. His hairy skin is a sufficient proof of his low intellect, an infallible sign that as he never would be able to provide himself with an artificial clothing, Nature was obliged to protect him against the inclemencies of the cold nights and the pouring rain. As man advances in age, his mind acquires a greater depth and a wider range. In the ape, on the contrary, signs of a livelier intelligence are only exhibited during youth, and as the animal waxes in years, its physiognomy acquires a more brutal expression; its forehead recedes, its jaws project, and instead of expanding to a higher perfection, its mental faculties are evidently clouded by a premature decline.
Both in Africa and Asia, we find large anthropomorphous apes, but while the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla exclusively belong to the African wilds, the Uran and the Gibbons are confined to the torrid regions of South Asia.
499 The Chimpanzee (Simia troglodytes) attains a height of about five feet, but seems much smaller from his stooping attitude. He inhabits the dense forests on the west coast of Africa, particularly near the river Gaboon, and as his travels are facilitated by his fatherland not being too far distant from Europe, there is hardly a Zoological Garden of any note that does not exhibit a chimpanzee among its lions. One of the finest specimens ever seen was kept a few years since in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where the mild climate, agreeable diet (he drank his pint of Bordeaux daily), and lively society of the French maintained him in wonderful health and spirits.
‘The last time I saw him’ (May 1854), says an accomplished naturalist,40 ‘he came out to inhale the morning air in the large circular inclosure in front of the monkey palace, which was built for our poor relations by M. Thiers. Here Chim began his day by a leisurely promenade, casting pleased and thankful glances towards the sun, the beautiful sun of early summer.
RUFOUS COATIMONDI
‘He had three satellites, Coatimondis, either by chance or to amuse him, and while making all manner of eyes at a young lady, who supplied the Singerie with pastry and cakes, one of the coatimondis came up stealthily behind, and dealt him a small but malicious bite. Chim looked round with astonishment at this audacious outrage on his person, and put his hand hastily upon the wound, but without losing his temper in the least. He walked deliberately to the other side of the circle, and fetched a cane which he had dropped in his promenade. He returned with majestic wrath upon his brow, mingled, I thought, with contempt, and taking coati by the tail, commenced punishment with his cane, administering such blows as his victim could bear without permanent injury, and applied with equal justice on the ribs at either side. When he thought enough had been done, he disposed of coati, without moving a muscle of his countenance, by a500 left-handed jerk, which threw the delinquent high in air, head over heels.
‘He came down a sadder and a better coati, and retired with shame and fear to a distant corner. Having executed this act of justice, Chim betook himself to a tree. A large baboon, who had in the meantime made his appearance in the circle, thought this was a good opportunity of doing a civil thing, and accordingly mounted the tree, and sat down smilingly, as baboons smile, upon the next fork. Chim slowly turned his head at this attempt at familiarity, measured the distance, raised his hind foot, and as composedly as he had caned the coati, kicked the big baboon off his perch into the arena below. This abasement seemed to do the baboon good, for he also retired like the coati, and took up his station on the other side.’
The body of the chimpanzee is covered with long hair on the head, shoulders, and back, but much thinner on the breast and belly. The arms and legs are not so disproportionate as those of the uran, the fore-fingers not quite touching the knees when the animal stands upright. The upper part of the head is very flat, with a retiring forehead, and a prominent bony ridge over the eye-brows, the mouth is wide, the ears large, the nose flat, and the face of a blackish-brown colour.
From this short notice it will be seen at once that friend Chim has not the least claim to beauty, but yet he is far from equalling the hideous deformity of the Gorilla, whom M. Du Chaillu has so prominently introduced to public notice. This savage animal, which is covered with black hair like the chimpanzee, and resembles it in the proportion of its body and limbs, though its form is much more robust, unites a most ferocious and undaunted temper with an herculean bodily strength, and is said to hold undisputed dominion of the hill-forests in the interior of Lower Guinea, forcing even the panther to ignominious flight.
To kill a gorilla is considered by the negroes as a most courageous exploit; and Dr. Savage, an American missionary on the coast of Guinea, who, in a memoir published at Boston in the year 1847, was the first to point out the generic differences between this formidable ape and the chimpanzee, tells us that a slave having shot a male and female gorilla, whose skeletons501 afterwards came into his possession, was immediately set at liberty and proclaimed the prince of hunters.
M. Du Chaillu’s description of his first encounter with an adult gorilla, shows that this distinction was by no means unmerited, and that it requires all the coolness and determination of an accomplished sportsman to face an animal of such appalling ferocity and power. ‘The under-bush swayed rapidly just ahead, and presently before us stood an immense male gorilla. He had gone through the jungle on his all-fours, but when he saw our party he erected himself, and looked us boldly in the face. He stood about a dozen yards from us, and was a sight I think I shall never forget. Nearly six feet high (he proved four inches shorter), with immense body, huge chest, and great muscular arms, with fiercely glaring, large deep-grey eyes, and a hellish expression of face, which seemed to me like some night-mare vision; thus stood before us the king of the African forest. He was not afraid of us. He stood there and beat his breast with his huge fists, till it resounded like an immense bass-drum, which is their mode of offering defiance, meantime giving vent to roar after roar. The roar of the gorilla is the most singular and awful noise heard in these African woods. It begins with a sharp bark like an angry dog, then glides into a deep bass roll which literally and closely resembles the roll of distant thunder along the sky, for which I have been sometimes tempted to take it when I did not see the animal. So deep is it that it seems to proceed less from the mouth and throat than from the deep chest and vast paunch. His eyes began to flash deeper fire as we stood motionless on the defensive, and the crest of short hair which stands on his forehead began to twitch rapidly up and down, while his powerful fangs were shown as he again sent forth a thunderous roar.
‘And now truly he reminded me of nothing but some hellish dream-creature; a being of that hideous order, half-man, half-beast, which we find pictured by old artists in some representations of the infernal regions. He advanced a few steps, then stopped to utter that hideous roar again, advanced again, and finally stopped when at a distance of about six yards from us. And here, just as he began another of his roars, beating his breast in rage, we fired and killed him. With a groan which had502 something terribly human in it, and yet was full of brutishness, he fell forward on his face. The body shook convulsively for a few minutes, the limbs moved about in a struggling way, and then all was quiet—death had done its work, and I had leisure to examine the huge body. It proved to be five feet eight inches high, and the muscular development of the arms and breast showed what immense strength he had possessed.’
Deep in the swampy forests of Sumatra and Borneo, lives the famous Uran, or ‘Mias’ as he is called by the Malays. He is less human in his shape than the chimpanzee, as his hind-legs are shorter and his arms so long that they reach to his ankles, but in intelligence he is supposed to be his superior. The jaws are more projecting, and the thick pouting lips add to the brutal expression of his physiognomy. While in a well-proportioned human face the distance from the chin to the nose forms but a third of the total length, it amounts to one-half in the uran. But little of the restlessness of the monkey is to be seen in him. He loves an indolent repose, and the necessity for procuring food seems alone capable of rousing him from his laziness. When satiated, he immediately resumes his favourite position, sitting for hours together upon a branch, with bent back, with eyes immovably staring upon the ground, and uttering from time to time a melancholy growl. He generally spends the night on the crown of a nibong-palm or of a screw pine: he often also seeks a refuge against the wind and cold among the orchids and ferns which cover the branches of the giant trees. There he spreads his couch of small twigs and leaves, for he distinguishes himself from all other apes by his not sleeping in a sitting position, but on the back or on one side, and in inclement weather he is even said to cover his body with a layer of foliage. The Dyaks affirm that the Mias is never attacked by other animals, except by the crocodile and the tiger-snake. When there are no fruits in the jungle, he goes to the river banks, where he finds many young shoots which he likes to eat, and fruits which grow near to the water. Then the crocodile sometimes tries to seize him, but the Mias springs upon it, lacerates and kills it. An old Dyak chieftain told Mr. Wallace that he had once witnessed a combat of this kind, in which the Mias is invariably the conqueror. When attacked by a tiger-snake, he seizes the reptile with his hands503 and kills it with a vigorous bite. The Mias is very strong, stronger than any other animal of the jungle.
Rajah Brooke, who observed the sluggish Urans in their wild state, relates that even when chased and alarmed by the shouts of men and the firing, they never went from tree to tree faster than a man might easily follow through the jungle below. In general they sought the very summit of a lofty tree, and often remained seated without changing their position whilst several shots were discharged at them. The Dyaks catch them in the following manner. Having discovered the animal in a tree, they approach without disturbing him, and as quickly as possible cut down all the trees around the one he is in. Being previously provided with poles, some with nooses attached to the ends and others forked, they fell the isolated tree, and noosing and forking down the uran, soon make him their captive.
The series of the large anthropomorphous apes closes with the Gibbons. Their arms, which reach to the ankle joints when the animal is standing erect, are longer than those of the uran; their brain, and consequently their intelligence, is less developed; and moreover, like all the following simiæ of the Old World, they possess callosities on each side of the tail. Their size is inferior to that of the uran, and their body is covered with thicker hair, grey, brown, black, or white—according to the species—but never party-coloured, as is the case with many of the long-tailed monkeys.
To the gibbons belong the black Siamang of Sumatra—who, assembled in large troops, hails the first blush of early morn, and bids farewell to the setting sun with dreadful clamours—the black, white-bearded Lar of Siam and Malacca, and the Wou-Wou (Hylobates leuciscus), who, hanging suspended by his long arms, and swinging to and fro in the air, allows one to approach within fifty yards, and then, suddenly dropping upon a lower branch, climbs again leisurely to the top of the tree. He is a quiet, solitary creature of a melancholy peaceful nature, pursuing a harmless life, feeding upon fruits in the vast untrodden recesses of the forest; and his peculiar noise is in harmony with the sombre stillness of these dim regions, commencing like the gurgling of water when a bottle is being filled, and ending with a long loud wailing cry, which resounds throughout504 the leafy solitude to a great distance, and is sometimes responded to from the depths of the forest by another note as wild and melancholy.
Besides the uran and the gibbons, Asia exclusively possesses the Semnopitheci and the Macaques, while Africa, besides the chimpanzee and the gorilla, enjoys the undivided honour of giving birth to the families of the Cercopitheci, Mangabeys, Colobi, Magots, and Baboons.
The Semnopitheci are characterised by a short face, rounded ears, a slender body, short thumbs, and a strong muscular tail, terminated by a close tuft of hair, and surpassing in length that of all the other quadrumana of the Old World. To this genus belongs the celebrated Proboscis Monkey (Semnopithecus nasicus) of Borneo, who is distinguished from all other simiæ by the possession of a prominent nasal organ, which lends a highly ludicrous expression to the melancholy aspect of his physiognomy. ‘When excited and angry,’ says Mr. Adams, who had many opportunities of examining this singular creature in its native woods, ‘the female resembles some tanned and peevish, hag, snarling and shrewish. They progress on all-fours, and sometimes, while on the ground, raise themselves upright and look about them. When they sleep, they squat on their hams, and bow their heads upon the breast. When disturbed, they utter a short impatient cry, between a sneeze and a scream, like that of a spoilt and passionate child; and in the selection of their food they appear very dainty, frequently destroying a fruit, and hardly tasting it. When they emit their peculiar wheezing or hissing sound, they avert and wrinkle the nose, and open the mouth wide. In the male, the nose is a curved, tubular trunk, large, pendulous, and fleshy; but in the female it is smaller, recurved, and not caruncular.’
Under the ugly form of the Huniman (Semnopithecus Entellus), the Hindoos venerate the transformed hero who abstracted the sweet fruit of the mango from the garden of a giant in Ceylon, and enriched India with the costly gift. Out of gratitude for this service, the Hindoos allow him the free use of their gardens, and take great care to protect him from sacrilegious Europeans. While the French naturalist Duvaucel was at Chandernagor, a guard of pious Brahmins was busy scaring away the sacred animals with cymbals and drums, lest the505 stranger, to whom they very justly attributed evil intentions, might be tempted to add their skins to his collection.
The Semnopitheci are scattered over Asia in so great a multiplicity of forms, that Ceylon alone possesses four different species, each of which has appropriated to itself a different district of the wooded country, and seldom encroaches on the domain of its neighbours. ‘When observed in their native wilds,’ says Sir J. E. Tennent, ‘a party of twenty or thirty of the Wanderoos of the low country, the species best known in Europe (Presbytes cephalopterus), is generally busily engaged in the search for berries and buds. They are seldom to be seen on the ground, and then only when they have descended to recover seeds or fruit that have fallen at the foot of their favourite trees. In their alarm, when disturbed, their leaps are prodigious, but generally speaking their progress is made not so much by leaping as by swinging from branch to branch, using their powerful arms alternately, and when baffled by distance, flinging themselves obliquely so as to catch the lower bough of an opposite tree; the momentum acquired by their descent being sufficient to cause a rebound, that carries them again upwards till they can grasp a higher branch, and thus continue their headlong flight. In these perilous achievements wonder is excited less by the surpassing agility of these little creatures, frequently encumbered as they are by their young, which cling to them in their career, than by the quickness of their eye and the unerring accuracy with which they seem to calculate almost the angle at which a descent would enable them to cover a given distance, and the recoil to elevate themselves again to a higher altitude.’
The African Colobi greatly resemble the Asiatic Semnopitheci, but differ by the remarkable circumstance of having no thumb on the hands of their anterior extremities.
The Cercopitheci likewise possess a large tail, which is, however, not more or less pendulous, as in the semnopitheci, but generally carried erect over the back. They have also a longer face, and their cheeks are furnished with pouches, in which, like the pelican or the hamster, they are capable of stowing part of their food; an organisation which seems to denote that they are inhabitants of a country where the forests are less extensive. They are not devoid of intelligence, but extremely restless and noisy. Many that were mild and amiable while young, undergo506 at a later period a complete change of character. The only way, according to M. Isidore Geoffroy, to curb the temper of one of these full-grown monkeys is to extract the sharp and formidable canine teeth, with which it is capable of inflicting the most dangerous wounds. When disarmed, it immediately alters its manners, as it now feels its impotence. Several of the monkeys belonging to this group are distinguished by the lively colours of their fur; that of the Diana Monkey (Cercopithecus diana) among others, which is a native of Congo and Guinea, sells for a considerable price.
Nothing can be more amusing to the disinterested spectator or more provoking to the proprietor than to witness the operations of a troop of Cercopitheci while plundering a dhourra or maize field. Under the guidance of an old and experienced male, the impudent robbers set out on their foraging expedition. The female monkeys carry with them their young ones, who, clasping their mother’s neck with their fore-feet, sometimes also wind their little caudal appendages as an additional support round her tail. At first the band approaches with great caution, the leader constantly at its head, and the others following from branch to branch. Sometimes he climbs to the top of a high tree for the purpose of reconnoitring, and finding all safe, a few tranquillising guttural sounds make known to his followers the satisfactory results of his inspection. Alighting from the tree nearest to the field, a few leaps bring them to the scene of action, where their first care is to stuff their wide cheek pouches with provender as fast as they can. This done, they allow themselves more leisure and at the same time become mor............