Certainly they like the sun; and we have often seen a pair at the
Zoological Gardens sunning themselves after their breakfast with great
delight. They sit on a bar, close to the wires of the cage, and climb
four or five feet up it, clinging close to their iron prison, just in
the range of a sunbeam. They spread out their black hands, and enjoy
the glare, becoming sleepy and disinclined to pay any attention to
nuts, cakes, and other temptations. They peer down at you with their
expressive eyes, and give an occasional twist to their tail, to pull
it close to them, probably after a long experience of the habits of
the other Monkeys in the cage, who certainly have not an overwhelming
respect for them. It is curious to see them climbing slowly, and
without the great exertion and bounds of some of the Guenons, and to
notice their marching, head and back downwards, whilst they crawl along
the under-side of the roof of their house, looking down every now and
then in a cunning sort of manner.
[Illustration: WANDEROO.]
Broderip used to watch one, when the Zoological Society’s collection
was in its infancy in Bruton Street, and a right merry fellow was he.
“He would run up his pole and throw himself over the cross-bar, so
as to swing backwards and forwards as he hung suspended by the chain
which held the leathern strap that girt his loins. The expression of
his countenance was peculiarly innocent; but he was sly--very sly--and
not to be approached with impunity by those who valued their head-gear.
He would sit demurely on his cross perch, pretending to look another
way, or to examine a nut-shell for some remnant of kernel, till a
proper victim came within his reach; when down the pole he rushed, and
up he was again in the twinkling of an eye, leaving the bare-headed
surprised one, minus his hat, at least, which he had the satisfaction
of seeing undergoing a variety of transformations, under the plastic
hands of the grinning monster, not at all calculated to improve a shape
which the taste of a Moore [the hat maker of the day], perhaps, had
designed and executed. It was whispered--_horrescimus referentes_--that
he once scalped a bishop, who ventured too near, notwithstanding the
caution given to his lordship by another dignitary of the Church, and
that it was some time before he could be made to give up, with much
grinning and chattering, the well-powdered wig which he had profanely
transferred from that sacred poll to his own. The lords spiritual
of the present day, with one or two exceptions, are safe from such
sacrilege. Now it would be nearly as difficult to take a wig off a
bishop as it once was to take the breeches off a Highlandman. But
another Wanderoo, confined in the open part of the gardens in the
Regent’s Park, was of a different temperament. There was a melancholy
about this creature. He would climb his pole, ascend to his elevated
house-top, and there sit for half an hour together, gazing wistfully
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