The value of hair is from five to twelve shillings per ounce, according to the quality, length, or colour. Before it can be used it is well rubbed with dry sand, and afterwards boiled, to clean it. Such as is intended for wigs, if it do not curl naturally, is twisted round small earthenware cylinders, put into a vessel with sand, and baked in an oven, until it acquire this property. The most scarce and valuable kind of hair is that of flaxen colour.
So great was formerly the demand for long hair, and so extravagant the price for which it was frequently sold, that a mode was invented of stretching it to nearly double its original length. This was effected by fastening the ends of the hair to the opposite sides of a vessel, placing a heavy weight across the middle, and applying heat underneath. As the heat softened the hair, the weight pressed it down, and extended it. But this project was found not to answer, as the hair lost all its quality, and could never be used but when mixed with other hair, and even then the fraud was discoverable by the stretched hair gradually shrinking nearly to its original length.
In lawyers' and judges' wigs horse-hair and goats'-hair are frequently used, to give stiffness and form to the different parts.
16. APES, BABOONS, and MONKEYS (Simia), are all animals of hot climates, none of them except the Barbury ape (Simia inuus) being ever found wild in Europe. They are distinguished by having four front teeth in each jaw, and all their feet formed like hands.
Linnæus, although he has arranged these animals under one tribe, has characterised the apes by their entire want of tails; the baboons by having short tails; and the monkeys by having long ones. The tails of some of the monkeys, particularly those of South America, are so formed, that the animals are able to coil them round any object so firmly as to afford them a support in, apparently, the most perilous situations. Several of the monkeys have pouches within their cheeks, in which they collect their food previously to its being swallowed.
The chief, perhaps the only, use to which these animals are applied, is as food. The pigmy apes are caught by the Arabs, and fattened for this purpose, as we would fatten sheep. Whilst Dampier was on the coast of America he frequently partook of this kind of food; and states that he never ate any thing more delicious. The native American tribes eat the flesh of almost all kinds of monkeys, preferring that, however, of the four-fingered species to any other. Oexmelin informs us that, while he was at Cape Gracias a Dios, in New Spain, the hunters regularly brought home, in the evening, such monkeys as they had killed in the course of the day; and that their flesh somewhat resembled that of a hare, and was of peculiarly sweet flavour. He observes, that he and his companions lived on these animals all the time they remained there.
Desmarchias, in his account of Cayenne, says that the flesh of the howling monkeys, which are peculiarly numerous in the woods of that county, is a white and very palatable food, not indeed so fat, but in general as good, as mutton. Both the negroes and the colonists of Surinam occasionally subsist on monkeys. Yet, however delicate this kind of food may be, it is extremely repugnant to the feelings of an European to partake of what, when skinned, has so much the form and general appearance of a human being as these animals.
The woods of nearly all hot climates abound in monkeys, the species of which are extremely numerous. They feed almost wholly on fruit, grain, roots, and other vegetable productions. It would be inconsistent with the plan of the present work to enter into any detail relative to their habits of life. We can only say, generally, that few animals are known to be more active, mischievous, and enterprising than these. They usually live in immense troops, and commit great depredations in cultivated grounds near the forests where they reside; some of them continuing on watch, to give alarm in case of danger, whilst others are engaged in pilfering and carrying off the plunder to their habitations.
17. The BATS (Vespertilio) constitute a very singular tribe of quadrupeds, which have the toes of their fore-feet extremely long, and connected together by a very thin and dark-coloured membrane, that extends round the hinder part of their body, and serves the place of wings, in enabling them to flit along the air in pursuit of food.
There are near thirty ascertained species of bats, six of which are occasionally found in England. Some of them are smaller than a mouse, but others are so large that their extended membranes measure betwixt three and four feet in width. The latter are found only in torrid climates.