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122 skin belongs to, the Soko-skulls — then the tribes of the Livingstone have among them a furry-skinned race of men that feed by night and have no articulate speech. If, on the other hand, these furred creatures are so like monkeys that even savages cannot recognize their humanity, and yet so like men that even Professor Huxley cannot recognize any trace of monkey in their skulls, the person called the Soko must be a very satisfactory missing link indeed; for it is essential in such a person that he should so nearly resemble both his next of kin as to be exactly assignable to neither.

Man himself would, I believe, be glad, in his present advanced state of sympathetic civilization, to admit the monkey’s claim to alliance with himself; for it is a fact that our race finds a pleasure in referring loftily to the obscurity of its own origin, and feels a natural pride in having raised itself above its fortunes.

In India, where the monkeys live among men, and are the playmates of their children, the Hindoos have grown so fond of them that the four-handed folk participate in all their simple household rites. In the early morning, when the peasant goes out to yoke his plough, and the crow wakes up, and the dog stretches himself and shakes off the dust in which he has slept all night, the old monkey creeps down from the peepul-tree, only half awake, and yawns, and looks about him, puts a straw in his mouth, and scratches himself contemplatively.

Then one by one the whole family come slipping down the tree-trunk, and they all yawn and look about and scratch. But they are sleepy and peevish, and the youngsters get cuffed for nothing, and begin to think life dull. Yet the toilet has to be performed; and,