ILLUSTRATIONS

GORILLAS AND CHIMPANZEES

CHAPTER I
MAN AND APE COMPARED

Monkeys have always been a subject of idle interest to old and young; but they have usually served to amuse the masses more than to instruct them, until within recent years.

Now that science has brought them within the field of careful research, and made them an object of serious study, it has invested them with a certain dignity in the esteem of mankind, and imparted to them a new aspect among animals.

There is no other creature that so charms and fascinates the beholder as do these little effigies of the human race. The simple and the wise are alike impressed with their human look and manner; children and patriarchs with equal delight watch them with surprise; but now that the search-light of science is being thrown into every nook and crevice of nature, human interest in them is multiplied many fold, while the savants of all civilised lands are struggling with the problem of their possible relationship to man.

Pursuant to the desire of learning as much as possible about their natural habits, faculties, and resources, they are being studied from every available point of view, and every characteristic compared in detail to the corresponding one in man. Hence, in order to appreciate more fully the value of the lessons to be drawn from the contents of this volume, we must know the relative planes in the scale of nature that man and monkeys occupy, wherefore we shall begin our task by comparing them in a general way; but as the scope of this work is restricted mainly to the great apes, the comparison will likewise be confined to that subject, except in so far as to define the relations of man and ape to monkeys.

Since monkeys differ among themselves so widely, it is evident that all of them cannot in the same degree resemble man. And as the degree of interest in them as a subject of comparative study is approximately measured by the degree of their likeness to man, it is apparent that all cannot be regarded as of equal interest. But since each forms an integral part of the scale of nature, they are of equal importance in tracing out the continuity of the order to which they belong.

The vast family of simians has perhaps the widest range of types of any single family of mammals. Beginning with the great apes, which so closely resemble man in size, form and structure, they