This completes our sketch of the American monkeys, and we see that,
although they possess no such remarkable forms as the gorilla or the
baboons, yet they exhibit a wonderful diversity of external characters,
considering that all seem equally adapted to a purely arboreal life.
In the howlers we have a specially developed voice organ, which is
altogether peculiar; in the spider monkeys we find the adaptation to
active motion among the topmost branches of the forest trees carried to
an extreme point of development; while the singular nocturnal monkeys,
the active squirrel monkeys, and the exquisite little marmosets, show
how distinct are the forms under which the same general type, may be
exhibited, and in how many varied ways existence may be sustained under
almost identical conditions.


LEMURS.

In the general term, monkeys, considered as equivalent to the order
Primates, or the Quadrumana of naturalists, we have to include another
sub-type, that of the Lemurs. These animals are of a lower grade than
the true monkeys, from which they differ in so many points of structure
that they are considered to form a distinct sub-order, or, by some
naturalists, even a separate order. They have usually a much larger head
and more pointed muzzle than monkeys; they vary considerably in the
number, form, and arrangement of the teeth; their thumbs are always well
developed, but their fingers vary much in size and length; their tails
are usually long, but several species have no tail whatever, and they
are clothed with a more or less woolly fur, often prettily variegated
with white and black. They inhabit the deep forests of Africa,
Madagascar, and Southern Asia, and are more sluggish in their movements