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Monkeys, then, are both four-handed and four-footed beasts; they possess four hands formed very much like our hands, and capable of picking up or holding any small object in the same manner; but they are also four-footed, because they use all four limbs for the purpose of walking, running, or climbing; and, being adapted to this double purpose, the hands want the delicacy of touch and the freedom as well as the precision of movement which ours possess.
"At first sight, the termination of the hind-limb of the Gorilla looks very hand-like, and as it is still more so in the lower apes, it is not wonderful that the appellation 'Quadrumana, or four-handed creatures, adopted from the older anatomists by Blumenbach, and unfortunately rendered current by Cuvier, should have gained such wide acceptance as a name for the ape order.
A man in his development runs for a little while parallel with, though never passing through, the form of the meanest worm, then travels for a space beside the fish, then journeys along with the bird and the reptile for his fellow travellers; and only at last, after a brief companionship with the highest of the four-footed and four-handed world, rises into the dignity of pure manhood.
What would be the gain of having higher susceptibilities and keener perceptions if they only aggravated the triumph of the insulting flea? The old naturalists called the apes and lemurs Quadrumana, the "four-handed," and separated the Bimana, with one species namely, Homo sapiens.
When they are inclined to play pranks he is always at their service, and woe betide the unhappy small boy of a ship's company on whose muster-roll a monkey is not to be found! as he has to endure what the four-handed animal would otherwise have to go through. On looking over the side Harry observed a black fin gliding along at the same rate as the schooner.
Four-handed soldiers can deliver a simply astonishing volume of fire, particularly when armed with auto-rifles having twenty-shot drop-out magazines which can be changed with the lower hands without lowering the weapon. There was a clatter of shod hoofs, and a company of King Jaikark of Konkrook's cavalry came trotting up on their six-legged, lizard-headed, quartz-speckled, mounts.
Besides being reckoned among the four-handed creatures, a Greek name has been given to bats, from the curious way in which their fore paws, or hands, have been lengthened out into wings; it means "hand-winged."
Patience is not a prominent gift of our four-handed relatives, but compensating nature has endowed them with the genius of self-help and its adjuvant talents, observation, causality, imitativeness, covetousness, and self-asserting pluck. They also possess a fair share of such faculties as inquisitiveness, vigilance, and perseverance, all rudiments, indeed, but the rudiments of supremacy.
It was on account of this peculiarity that the great French naturalist Cuvier named the whole group of monkeys Quadrumana, or four-handed animals, because, besides the two hands on their fore-limbs, they have also two hands in place of feet on their hind-limbs.
"Papa will go on talking about stupid things all night." And shortly afterwards young Gould, who had taken his sister's place when she went, proposed that they should go to the billiard-room and knock the balls about. So they went and made a four-handed game with two of the girls.
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