M05KEYS EMOTIONS. 477 



they beat or drum with pieces of stick on sonorous pieces 

 of wood. 1 



Curiosity is more strongly pronounced in monkeys 

 than in any other animals. We all know the interesting 

 illustration on this head furnished by the experiment of 

 Mr. Darwin, who, in order to test the statement of Brehm 

 that monkeys have an instinctive dread of snakes, and yet 

 cannot * desist from occasionally satiating their curiosity in 

 a most human fashion, by lifting up the lid of the box in 

 which the snakes were kept,' took a stuffed snake to the 

 monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. Mr. Darwin 

 says : - 



The excitement thus caused was one of the most curious* 

 spectacles I ever beheld. ... I then placed a live snake in 

 a paper bag, with the mouth loosely closed, in one of the larger 

 compartments. One of the monkeys immediately approached, 

 cautiously opened the bag, peeped in, and instantly dashed 

 away. Then I witnessed what Brehm has described, for 

 monkey after monkey, with head raised high and turned on 

 one side, could not resist taking a momentary peep into the 

 upright bag, at the dreadful object lying quietly at the 

 bottom. 2 



Allied, perhaps, to curiosity, and so connected with 

 the emotions, is what Mr. Darwin calls ' the principle of 

 imitation.' It is proverbial that monkeys carry this 

 principle to ludicrous lengths, and they are the only 

 animals which imitate for the mere sake of imitating, as 

 has been observed by Desor, though an exception ought 

 to be made in favour of talking birds. The psychology 

 of imitation is difficult of analysis, but it is remarkable 

 as well as suggestive that it should be confined in its 

 manifestations to monkeys and certain birds among ani- 

 mals, and to the lower mental levels among men. As 

 Mr. Darwin says : 



The principle of imitation is strong in man, and especially, 

 as I have myself observed, with savages. In certain morbid 

 states of the brain, this tendency is exaggerated to an extra- 

 ordinary degree ; some hemiplegic patients and others, at the 



1 Soxton Journal of Nat. Higt., iv. p. 324. 



2 Descent of Man, p. 72. 



