"It shook hands with some of the sailors, but refused its hand with
marks of anger to others, without any apparent cause. It speedily,
however, became familiar with the crew, except one boy, to whom it was
never reconciled. When the seamen's mess was brought on deck it was
a constant attendant, would go round and embrace each person, while
it uttered loud yells, and then seat itself among them to share the
repast."
Some of the Monkey tribe (the Spider-monkeys) have the power of holding
fast with the end of the tail; it, in fact, forms a sort of hand,
and they swing from the boughs by it, and it is said that several
will attach themselves in this way, forming a long chain, and swing
themselves from the topmost bough of a tree when they wish to cross a
stream, the lowest catching hold of the boughs on the opposite side,
and the uppermost of them letting go his hold, they are all thus
conveyed across.
12. BIMANA (two-handed). This order includes Man alone. Man
has been placed in a separate class, and not as the first order of
the Mammalia, but, as will be presently noticed, although he has many
attributes which no other animal has, yet in bodily construction, and
all the functions of his material part, he so nearly resembles the
other orders of his class that it is deemed better to place him at
their head under the designation of "two-handed;" although indeed he is
the only animal who can be said to possess hands, properly so called,
for those of the Monkey tribe are so imperfectly developed that they
have but little claim to the name.
In his circulation, respiration, digestion, &c., Man exactly resembles
the other Mammalia, also in the organs of locomotion and special sense,
modified slightly in form; but to these purely animal attributes, he
has superadded faculties which raise him above them, and show him to
be the last and most perfect of God's creatures, one step further, in
fact, than any other living being; and it is a curious circumstance,
and one showing the accuracy of detail, with which the Mosaic account
of Creation in the Bible abounds, that this very superiority is not
only mentioned in many ways, but recorded as the result of a special
act of God over and above his formation as an ordinary animal, in
which state he was created, for we find the words, "and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became _a living soul_,"
this especial act was not performed for any other being which God had
created, of which it is stated simply "male and female created He them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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