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Another random document with
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 All these are Rodents, and you may know them by their four long
chisel-like front teeth (see B, Fig. 55), which have a large gap on each
side, between them and the grinding teeth behind. These chisel teeth
have not bony roots like the teeth of most animals, but rest in a deep
socket, and continue growing during the whole of the animal’s life; and
they have a hard coat of enamel in front, so that as the tooth wears
away behind, this enamel stands out and forms a sharp cutting edge,
and there is perhaps no tool more efficient for gnawing a root, a
nutshell, or the solid wood of a tree, than the tooth of a beaver or rat.

Fig. 55.

A, Skull of an insect-eating animal (Insectivore),

showing the numerous pointed teeth. B, Skull of a
gnawing animal (Rodent) showing the large chisel teeth in
front, and the gap between these and the hind teeth.

But these animals have another and quite a different set of

companions, as you will learn if you are lucky enough, by looking
carefully along the hedge, to startle a little shrew in its quest for worms,
or to catch a hedgehog shuffling along at a sharp trot after his nightly
meal of beetles, slugs, and snails; nay, you may even, if it be early
summer, come across a mole, or find two fighting fiercely together for
possession of the only thing they come to the upper world to fetch—a
wife.
These creatures have not the long front chisels of the hare or the
shrew; on the contrary, their mouth is small, and crowded with a
number of fine pointed teeth (see A, Fig. 55), of which even the back
ones have sharp cusps or points, well fitted for crushing insects. For
these are Insectivora or insect-eaters; and while the rodents are
gnawing at roots and leaves and nuts, these devourers of small fry
mingle with them very amicably; while both groups only ask that the
night-owl may not see them in their evening wanderings, nor the
weasel and his bloodthirsty tribe attack them in their homes.
For, ever since they began the race of life, long long ago, these
two very different orders of animals have been trying to feed without
risk, and to keep out of the way of flesh-eating birds and larger
creatures. And so it has come to pass that, though the rodents are
mostly plant-eaters, while their associates are insect-eaters, yet, as
both are trying to conceal themselves, and get their food by stealth,
they have acquired curiously similar external forms, weapons, and
habits of life, with the one exception of their teeth and the manner of
eating their food.
Even in our English meadows a casual observer might easily
mistake the little insect-eating shrew, with its soft velvety coat and bare
paws (Fig. 56), for a near relation of the gnawing Harvest-mouse
nibbling the grass tips just above its head (Fig. 57); though a nearer
inspection of the shrew’s long snout, small ears, and sharp teeth,
would show the difference. And as to their way of life, the Field-shrew
and the larger Field-mouse live like two brothers of the same race.
They both make burrows in the banks, though the field-mouse digs the
deeper hole, and they both line their home with dry grass to bring up
their little ones. And when the winter comes they both retreat into their
homes; the shrew to sleep away the dark days, and the mouse to
wake from time to time to feed upon his store. Only their food is quite
different, and when they come out in the twilight of the summer’s
evening, the mouse is on the look out for acorns, nuts, grains, and
roots, which it gnaws off with its sharp chisels, while the shrew is
chasing worms and insects, or cracking tiny snails with its pointed
teeth.
Then if you lie and watch quietly by the bank of a river, there you
may see the Water-rat or Vole (not the land-rat which sometimes hunts
for prey in the water) diving under with a splash to gnaw the roots of
the duckweed or the stems of the green flags, and coming up to sit on
the bank, and hold them in his paws as he eats them; while not far off
a pretty little Water-shrew, this time too small and different to be
mistaken for his companion, is swimming along with his hind feet, the
air bubbles covering his velvety back with silvery lustre as he chases
water-shrimps, or feeds on fish-spawn or young frogs. Both these
animals live in streams and rivers, and bring up their young in holes in
the bank, where they can jump into the water if the weasel attacks
them, or the common snake pokes his head too near their home.
These are perhaps the chief examples we shall find in England of
insect-eaters and gnawers living near together and following the same
kind of life; but if we look over the world it is most curious how many
parallels we can draw between them, showing how the same dangers
have led to the same defences.

Fig. 56.

A group of Insect-eaters.
Common Shrew, Hedgehog, Mole, Bat.
 Look among the insect-eaters at our Hedgehog (Fig. 56), so weak
and shuffling in his movements that he would have been cleared out of
the world long ago but for the sharp elastic spines which grow upon his
back in the place of hair. There he goes trotting along under the
hedges in the twilight, cracking the horny skins of beetles, or sucking
eggs, or devouring worms, slugs and mice when he can get them,
without a thought of fear. For he can roll himself up in an instant if
danger be near, and his sharp spines will keep off even dogs and
foxes, unless they can catch him unawares, and bite him underneath
in his soft throat. Nay, he can actually master a poisonous snake, and
use it for food, not suffering even from the adder’s fangs when they
pierce his tender nose.

Fig. 57.

A group of Rodents.
Harvest-mouse, Porcupine, Mole-rat.
 It is curious to see how quickly he can roll himself up by drawing
together the strong band of muscle which passes along the sides of his
body from head to tail, sending out bands of muscle to feet, head, and
legs. When he contracts this band his limbs are all drawn in, and the
spiny back forms a kind of prickly bag all round them, even his tender
snout being safely hidden. Nor are his spines merely sharp—they are
as elastic as the hair of which they are modifications; and the
hedgehog can drop safely from a height when he is in his ball-shape,
falling on the spines, which bend and straighten again as though made
of whalebone. So he lives under hedges and in ditches till the winter
comes, when he settles down in a nest of moss and leaves in a
hedgebank or a hollow tree, and sleeps the cold weather away. And
when the spring comes he takes a wife, who brings up her little ones in
the nest of moss and leaves under the hedgerow, watching over them
as long as their spines are soft.
And now where shall we look among the rodents for a creature to
match the hedgehog among insect-eaters? Surely to the “fretful
Porcupines,” which feed on all kinds of vegetable food in Southern
Europe, Africa, Asia, and America, protecting themselves by the
formidable array of spines which they can raise at will. Even the
European porcupine, which is about two feet long and the weakest of
his tribe, is better protected than is generally believed. It is true that his
long black and white ringed spines only cover the hinder part of his
body, but the hair of his head and neck hides a number of short spines
which can give very sharp pricks; and though he is a timid night-loving
animal, hiding by day in burrows and holes of the rocks, yet when
attacked he jerks himself up against his enemy, so that the long spines
wound very severely. And when we come to the Tree-porcupines,
which hang by their tails from the palm trees in Mexico and Brazil, we
find that their short stout spines are a very efficient defence both
against birds of prey and the deadly coils of the boa constrictor and
other large snakes; while the Western porcupine and the almost
tailless Canada porcupine, which climb trees and strip off their bark
and buds, have a clothing of such dangerous weapons that pumas and
wolves have been known to die of inflammation from the wounds.
The porcupine among the rodents, then, like the hedgehog among
insect-eaters, has adopted prickles as a defence. But there are many
soft-haired creatures living upon the ground in both families which
have no protection but concealment, and we find them both gaining it
by burrowing into the ground. Among the insect-eaters the Mole is the
most successful digger, and as he works his tortuous way through the
ground in search of worms and grubs, it is scarcely possible to imagine
a miner more usefully equipped for his work. His skeleton, it is true, is,
on the whole, more primitive and roughly finished than that of higher
animals, his ear is almost closed, and his eye though bright is deeply
hidden; but the parts specially necessary to him are most wonderfully
fitted for the work they have to do.
His broad shovel-like front paws (see Fig. 56), with their five strong
claws, set each in a long groove at the tip of the last finger-joint, are
powerful tools for shovelling away the earth, as he turns them
outwards and pushes with them as if he were swimming; and they are
carried on strong, short, and broad front legs, fixed to collar-bones and
a shoulder blade of unusual strength, while the breastbone is so
formed as to throw the legs forward and bring them on a level with his
nose when he is burrowing. This nose, too, has its part to play, for it is
long and slender, with a small bone at the tip, which helps him in
pushing his way forwards while his hind feet are planted flat and firm
on the ground behind, while it also serves to pick out the grubs,
worms, and beetles from their narrow holes.
Here, then, we have the very best of miners, who has secured food
and safety far from the busy world above, and spends his time hunting
for grubs and earth-worms in the dark earth below. He is a most
voracious animal, and makes the ground above him heave and swell
as he toils through it eager for prey, pushing up every now and then
with his nose the loose earth he has excavated, thus marking the line
of his route by molehills.
But when he builds his home and fortress where he takes his long
winter’s sleep, and hides from weasels and pole-cats, he takes care to
throw no loose rubbish above; on the contrary, he presses the earth
together so as to make the walls of his chamber firm and hard, and
carries out from it a number of passages, by any of which he can reach
his home in safety when he is pursued too closely.
 Thus by his cleverness in burrowing, and the useful tools which he
carries upon his body, the mole has managed to find safe feeding-
ground and shelter, when no doubt many of his relations living above
ground have been killed off. Even underground he has his enemies, for
the Weasel, the Stoat, and the Badger find him good eating, while if he
meets one of his own brothers in a narrow passage they will fight till
one is killed and eaten; yet though fierce he is also tender-hearted, for
mole-catchers say that when a mother-mole is caught in a trap the
father may sometimes be found dead by her side.
And now if we turn to the rodents for rivals to the mole, we are
almost confounded by the multitude of creatures which have found
safety in burrowing. Not only have we the rabbit-warrens, by which the
sandy soil of our commons is riddled in every direction with holes,
leading to burrows where the mother lies snugly hidden with her five or
six naked little ones in a bed of her own fur; but we have the extensive
burrows of the little, long-legged, leaping, gnawing Jerboas of Africa,
which are so like the Jumping Shrews among insect-eaters. Then
again there are the underground cities of the South American
Viscachas and Chinchillas, and the extensive subterranean
settlements of the Lemmings,—those curious rodents, which from time
to time start off in vast swarms across Norway, over mountain and
valley, through flood and fen, over rivers and plains, preyed upon by
eagles and hawks, foxes and weasels, on their way, but never
stopping or swerving in their course till they reach the sea, into which
they plunge and drown themselves. Again, every inhabitant of
Switzerland knows the Marmot and the burrows he forms, scratching
up the earth with his hind feet and patting it together with his front
paws and his broad nose; while every American child has heard of the
138
hillocks thrown up by the “Prairie Dogs,” which undermine whole
plains in the far west with their underground cities, where the
burrowing owl shares their home with them, and the rattlesnake steals
their young.
 Fig. 58.

The Pyrenean Desman,141 an insect-eating water

animal.

But all these come out upon the land and use their burrows chiefly
for homes and nurseries. We can match the mole better than this
among rodents, for in Eastern Europe, India, and Africa, there are blind
139
creatures called Mole-rats (see Fig. 57), with broad flat heads,
small eyes hidden in their fur, short tails, and feet with sharp claws,
which live almost entirely underground, burrowing subterranean
galleries in the sandy plains in search of roots, as the mole does for
140
worms; while the Pouched Rats of North America also live in
burrows, throwing up hills just like mole-hills, and gnawing roots and
buried seeds, which they carry in their large cheek-pouches, to store
up in their underground chamber for winter food.
Nevertheless, the rodents can scarcely compete with the mole as
burrowers, and it is not till we come to the water-animals that they
begin to have the best of it. True, the insect-eaters have the Water-
143
shrew and the curious West African Shrew, with its broad tail; while
144
the Desman of Russia and the Pyrenees (see Fig. 58), with his
dense furry coat, his broad tail, and his webbed feet, is quite a match
for the gnawing Musk-rat or Musquash of North America, for they both
live in fortresses on the river-banks, to which hidden passages are well
contrived to elude pursuit; and while the desman, with his curious
movable snout, pokes about in the Russian or Pyrenean streams after
leeches, water-snails and insects, the musquash in America gnaws off
the roots and stems of water-plants.

Fig. 59.

The Beaver,142 a gnawing water-animal.

But the insect-eaters have no water-animal to match the Beaver in

sagacity, judgment, or engineering. For here we have a creature not
much larger than a good-sized cat, cutting down trees, dragging logs
six feet long to the water’s edge, and building with them the most
elaborate log-houses and water-dams. With hind feet webbed up to the
claws, and his broad tail as a rudder, the beaver has so much
swimming power that his fore legs are free to carry and place the
wood, while his broad orange-coloured teeth, as sharp as chisels,
which grow as fast as he wears them away, are his cutting
instruments. With them he gnaws a deep notch in the trunk of a larch
or pine or willow, as deep as he dares without fear of its falling, and
then going round to the other side, begins work there till the trunk is
severed and falls heavily on the side of the deep notch, and therefore
away from himself. Then, after stripping off the bark and gnawing the
trunk into pieces about six feet long, he uses his fore-paws and his
teeth to drag them into position to build his dam. The lighter branches
he uses to make his oven-shaped lodge, laying them down in basket-
work shape, plastering them with mud, grass, and moss, and lining the
chambers with wood-fibre, and dry grass; and the logs he piles up to
form dams, lest at any time the stream should flow away and leave the
entrances to his home dry. These dams are very skilfully and cunningly
formed. He always makes the deep notch in the trunk on the side near
the water, so that the tree in falling comes as near as possible to the
stream; then he does not always clear away all the branches, but he
and his companions place the logs with these lying down the stream,
so that they act as supports to resist the current and prevent the dam
being washed away. Thus they make a broad foundation, sometimes
as much as six feet wide, and upon this they pile logs and stones and
mud till they have made a barrier often ten feet high and more than a
hundred feet long.
In this way they clear the woods just round their stream, as if a
whole gang of wood-cutters had been there at work; and as the dams
check back the water and form broad meres, there are soon swamps
on all sides, where peat moss grows and “beaver-meadows” are
formed.
Here the beavers live in companies, each in his own chamber with
his wife and family, though underground passages often lead from one
to the other, and when water-plants and soft bark are scarce, they will
often travel some way inland to feed on fruits and grain. But if among
the community any are lazy or will not take partners, they are driven
out, to find a refuge in holes of the river-banks, where they sulk alone.
In Western Europe, indeed, where they have been so much
persecuted, most of the beavers live alone in holes, though
communities are still left in parts of Germany, Scandinavia, and
Siberia. But in North America they still carry on their true communal
life, and those who visit their wonderful settlements will not be
surprised to learn that they possess the largest brain for their size of
any of the gnawing animals.
Indeed, they would have no rival among rodents if it were not for
the clever sagacious rats, and these have probably sharpened their
wits by living so long in contact with man, for they are burrowers chiefly
in human dwellings, granaries, stables, mines, ships, and every
available dwelling-place where they can rob and plunder, and outwit
even man himself by working their way into his stores, and acting
together in carrying away his goods.
So the insect-eaters and rodents hold their own both by land and
water, penetrating, in the forms of bats and mice even to Australia,
though the rodents are most widely spread, for except two very rare
145
animals in the West Indian Islands, there are no Insectivora except
bats in South America. The bats, however, remind us that both these
groups have also found homes above the ground and in the trees.
There the rodents have the lovely little Squirrels, which, with their
brown red backs, white waistcoats, and graceful bushy tails, scamper
up the trees of our English woods. It is very tempting to dwell upon the
squirrel, with his little wife, to whom he remains faithful all his life, his
beautiful round nest, in which his young are so carefully reared, and
his pretty ways as he sits upright gnawing beechnuts or acorns,
holding them in his tiny hands. He has made good use of his
opportunities, being almost as widely spread as the rat, for there are
squirrels of some kind all over the world, wherever there are forests,
except in Australia. Several of them in the East and North America
have folds of skin at the side of the body, which, when tightly stretched,
by extending the four limbs, enable them to take flying leaps from tree
to tree (see Fig. 60). Even without flying, however, the squirrel is so
nimble that he manages well to escape his enemies, except some of
the birds of prey and the fierce tree-marten and wild cat; and as in cold
countries he sleeps soundly in snug holes of a tree till the leaves grow
again to give him shelter, he is not often detected even by these.
 Fig. 60.

On the tree, the Taguan146 or flying squirrel, a rodent;

Flying below, the Colugo,147 an insectivorous animal.

Nevertheless, in tree-life and in the air it is the turn of the insect-

eaters to claim the advantage. It is true that the insect-eating
148
Bangsrings, which scamper up the trees in Sumatra and South-
East Asia, and were long mistaken for squirrels, are a small family and
not of much importance; but what shall we say to the Bats, the only
true flying milk-givers? Or what, again, to that curious animal the
Colugo or Flying Lemur of the Malay Islands, which belongs to the
insect-eaters, and yet has some points like marsupials, some like fruit-
bats, and some like the true lemurs? This strange creature, which
seems like the remnant of some branch-line from very ancient times,
climbs the tree like a squirrel by means of its claws, and then
spreading out its limbs displays a broad membrane (see Fig. 60)
stretching not only along its sides but across its tail, and from the front
of the arms to the neck as in bats, and so sails down from one tree to
another. The mother, which Mr. Wallace examined, nurses the little one
on her breast just as the lemurs do, while large folds of her skin
protects the small, bald, naked little creature, something after the
manner of an imperfect pouch. Lastly, while they sometimes feed on
insects, the chief diet of these colugos is fruit, like the lemurs, to which
group they were once supposed to belong.

* * * * *
But of all modified insect-eaters the most extraordinary are the
Bats, which are so different from all the others that they have been
149
placed in a distinct order of their own. Imagine a little creature about
three inches long, with a body something like a shrew, large ears, a
protruding snout, and plenty of sharp teeth (see Figs. 61 and 62). Let it
have a breast bone projecting more than in most milk-givers, and
covered with a large mass of muscle as in birds, fitted to move the
wings, but having nipples to suckle its young. Let it have large
shoulder-blades and collar-bones, a strong upper arm, a very long
lower arm (fa, Fig. 61), and four immensely long fingers to its hand
(ha), and a short clawed thumb (t). Let its hind legs be short and weak,
with a long spur behind the heel (h) of its five-toed feet, and finally let
the skin of its body grow on over the arms and long fingers, filling in
the space between the elbows and the neck in front, and stretching
away behind, over the legs down to the ankle, and on behind the legs,
so as to enclose the tail. This skin growing from the back above, and
the under part of the body below, will enclose the bones of the arms,
hands, and legs, like a kite with calico stretched on both sides (see
Fig. 56, p. 220), and when the long fingers are outspread and the legs
opened, no limbs will be seen, but only a small body and head, with an
immense expanse of skinny wing, from which the short clawed thumbs
and the four toes of the feet stick out before and behind.
 Fig. 61.

Skeleton of a Bat.
(Lettered to compare with bird’s skeleton, p. 126).
fa, fore arm; w, wrist; t, thumb; ha, hand; h, heel; f, foot.

Now this creature is no longer like the flying squirrels or the colugo,
which can only take floating leaps; for though like them it has only a
membrane stretching out from its body, yet this has become a long
flexible wing, formed on a widely outstretched arm and abnormally
long hand, and moved by powerful muscles like the wings of birds or
insects. It is essentially fitted for flitting through the air in search of
prey, while it makes but little use of the running power which it
possesses in common with all other insect-eaters. If you see a bat
moving along the ground, you will acknowledge at once that it is a true
quadruped, yet, by its awkward gait as it shuffles along on its clawed
thumb and toes, you will judge that it is not an earth-loving animal.
Watch it at night on the wing and it is quite another creature; then it will
flit about in and out of cracks and crevices, under the eaves, round the
haystacks, or among the trees, and never once strike its wings against
anything, though it has been proved that it does not trust chiefly to its
bead-like eyes to guide it.
Bats have been blinded, their ears stopped with wool, and their
noses with sponge dipped in camphor; and yet, without sight, hearing,
or smell, they steered quite successfully between outstretched threads
or tree-branches, or found their way into a hole in the roof. In truth, as
they have become fitted to navigate the air, they seem also to have
become sensitive to its currents. Their wings are abundantly supplied
with nerves and blood-vessels, and have little rough points all over the
surface; their ears have generally a second ear-lobe or leaf within the
outer one, and those which have not this have leaves of skin or
membrane round their nose. With all these they seem to feel the
slightest difference in the air, so as to detect at once whether they are
in the open, or whether any resisting object is near them.

Fig. 62.

A Bat walking.

Now it is clear that a creature of this kind, able to chase insects in

the air, even in the darkest night, can secure much food that the
running insect-eaters can never reach. When the little common English
bat, the Pipistrelle, awakes from his day’s sleep, which he has been
taking, head downwards, hanging by his feet in some old tree or under
the roof of a barn, he finds the gnats and flies abroad, and begins his
chase in the twilight—up and down, from side to side he flits, and his
wide-open mouth takes in insects at every turn. And by-and-by, as the
dark nights come on, the Long-eared Bats begin gradually to stir from
their clusters in the barns and old buildings, and, unfolding their wings
so as to display their ears as long as their bodies, commit sad havoc
among the night-moths. All night long their shrill squeak may be heard,
but before day dawns they are away again, and may be found hanging
in dense masses by their hind legs to the timbers of some old church
belfry, or in caves, or even under the roofs of houses, where they find
an entrance by some hole, and go in by hundreds to hang from the
rafters.
Many accounts are given in American writers of the thousands of
bats collected in the caverns which abound in the Western States,
while in the Egyptian catacombs they hang in myriads. For of all things
a bat dreads the light when beasts of prey are abroad, and next to that
he fears any position near the ground where weasels, wild cats, or
other flesh-eating animals may seize him in his sleep. Nay, the smaller
bats live in constant fear of the larger ones, for they feed upon one
another with evident relish.
Yet in spite of dangers the bat family, aided by its power of flight,
has spread all over the world, from the Arctic Circle to the Equator,
east, west, north, and south. In cold countries they hang by their feet in
the winter, or sometimes by their clawed thumbs, and sleep in dark
recesses, scarcely breathing till the warm weather and the insects
return; but in warm countries they are active all the year, sleeping by
day and feeding by night.
In England and North America they are content chiefly with insect
food, but in South America the Vampires, among the leaf-nosed bats,
fasten on to large animals and suck their blood. Mr. Darwin had his
servant’s horse bitten and disabled for two days by a vampire in Chili;
while Mr. Wallace, when on the Amazon River, was himself twice
bitten, once upon the great toe, and once on the tip of his nose while
asleep! A bat is a grotesque-looking animal at best; but some of these
leaf-nosed bats are simply hideous, with their wide-open mouth, sharp
teeth, and the skinny leaves sticking up round their nose.
 How different are the gentle-looking fruit-eating bats of the Tropics,
which seem to belong to quite a different branch of the family. Their
fox-like and intelligent faces are a pleasure to look at, reminding one of
the lemurs, and harmonising beautifully with their quiet peaceful life
among the fig-trees, guavas, mango-trees, and plantains of the East.
There they hang in dense masses from the tall silk-cotton trees till
night comes on, and then take wing as soon as the sun is set, and
hooking themselves by one thumb to the fruit-trees, hold the fruit in the
other as they feed.

Fig. 63.

Fruit-bats150 hanging from the ledges of a cave in the

Mauritius.
 Thus we have a wide range of habits in bats, from the insect-
eaters to the blood-sucking vampires on one hand, and the gentle fruit-
bats on the other.
But one virtue the most bloodthirsty and the most gentle have in
common, and that is maternal love. As soon as the little ones are born
they cling to their mother’s breast, and she often folds over them the
skin which covers her tail, so as to form a kind of pouch, so that
wherever she flies they go with her, and are carefully tended and
suckled by her till they can take up the chase for themselves.
And now we have followed out the Rodents and Insectivora in their
various lines. Both lowly groups, of simple structure and with
comparatively feeble brains, they have chiefly escaped destruction
from higher forms by means of their nocturnal and burrowing habits or
arboreal lives, and the marvellous rapidity with which they breed,
combined with their power of sleeping without food during the winter in
all cold countries. Nevertheless, though they are often strangely alike
in outward form, they differ in many remarkable respects. The insect-
eaters now existing are chiefly a few straggling forms of a once widely-
spread group; while the rodents, on the contrary, are still a very
numerous and varied family, spread all over the earth, and boasting of
such intelligent forms as the squirrel, the beaver, and the rat. But here
their advantages appear to end, while the insectivora point onwards
not only to the bats, the only flying milk-givers, but also through the
colugo to the lemurs, and thus onwards to the monkeys. It may be, and
indeed probably is true, that the colugo started off from some very
early type, more nearly related to the pouch-bearers than the present
insect-eaters are; while the monkeys, again, branched off long ago on
another line quite separate from the modern lemurs. But if the tiny
shrew wished, like many little people, to boast of distinguished
connections, he might with justice suggest that somewhere among his
primitive ancestors one would probably be found whose descendants
had risen far higher in the world than himself.

* * * * *
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.
151
It is true a few kinds still linger in Japan, and one 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
152
Quadrumana 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,