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But in this ill-starred cathedral an inept precentor gave out, by way of liturgical canticles, a perfect menagerie of outlandish tunes, which, let loose on Sunday, seemed to scamper like marmosets up the pillars and under the roof. And the artless voices of the choir-boys were drilled to these musical monkey-tricks.
The American monkeys consist of two chief families, the Cebidae, and the Midas or Marmosets which are again separated into thirteen genera, consisting of about eighty-six species, greatly diversified among themselves. In America neither Pithecidae or Lemurs are found: they exclusively inhabit the Old World.
The Marmosets, on the other hand, exhibit the same number of teeth as Man and the Gorilla; but, notwithstanding this, their dentition is very different, for they have four more false molars, like the other American monkeys but as they have four fewer true molars, the total remains the same.
Those sterile shores, washed by water, which was covered with large green patches, had no other ornament than aquatic trees devoid of foliage, the twisted trunks and hoary heads of which, rising from the reeds and rushes, gave them a certain grotesque likeness to gigantic marmosets.
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.
In another part of the market all sorts of live birds were for sale, with a few live beasts, such as deer, monkeys, pigs, guinea-pigs in profusion, rats, cats, dogs, marmosets, and a dear little lion-monkey, very small and rather red, with a beautiful head and mane, who roared exactly like a real lion in miniature.
The monkeys which inhabit America form three very distinct groups: 1st, the Sapajous, which have prehensile or grasping tails; 2nd, the Sagouins, which have ordinary tails, either long or short; and, 3rd, the Marmosets, very small creatures, with sharp claws, long tails which are not prehensile, and a smaller number of teeth than all other American monkeys.
And therefore he hath so great multitude of them. And he hath of certain men as though they were yeomen, that keep birds, as ostriches, gerfalcons, sparrow-hawks, falcons gentle, lanyers, sakers, sakrets, popinjays well speaking, and birds singing, and also of wild beasts, as of elephants tame and other, baboons, apes, marmosets, and other diverse beasts; the mountance of fifteen cumants of yeomen.
Were we to translate this word into its meaning, namely, the Gnawers, there would be some comfort in it, for we would at once know what it means: but no matter. Rodents, or Gnawers, are rats, hares, rabbits, beavers, marmosets, squirrels, in fact all the creatures which nibble. To nibble, if you do not exactly understand the word, means to chew with the points of the teeth.
Indoors, Miss Johnson admired everything: the new parrots and marmosets, the black beams of the ceiling, the double-corner cupboard with the glass doors, through which gleamed the remainders of sundry china sets acquired by Bob's mother in her housekeeping two-handled sugar-basins, no-handled tea-cups, a tea-pot like a pagoda, and a cream-jug in the form of a spotted cow.
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