QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE. 



593 



In Hindostan monkeys enjoy all the privileges of a Mohammedan 

 lunatic, being permitted to rob the orchards with impunity, decimate 

 the rice-crop, and rob all the birds'-nests they want ; but, not content 

 with levying out-door contributions, they pillage the cottages of the 

 natives while the proprieters are at work in the fields ; nay, they often 

 manage to despoil the larder of the foreign residents, or black-mail 

 their children if they leave the bungalow with a lunch-basket or a 

 pocketful of nuts. 



The Rev. George Thielmann, of the Moravian mission, who passed 

 several years in the Eastern Punjaub, describes the despair of his Ger- 

 man cook at the impudence of the light-fingered gentry. " I do not 

 see how the natives can stand it," said she; "if they take those 

 baboons for Christians, they ought to have a penitentiary in every vil- 

 lage." If she went to the door to answer a bell, the macaques entered 

 the kitchen through the rear window ; going to look after her sun- 

 dried peaches, she found that the Bhunder apes had been beforehand 

 with her ; and if she left her bedroom-window open she was awakened 



.--'' 



r:?s. 



BHKPE 



Fig. 2. Misplaced Confidence. 



by a committee of Honumans taking an inventory of her wardrobe. 

 One day she left the gardener's dinner under a tree where he used to 

 take his siesta, but, returning with a dessert of German doughnuts, she 

 was just in time to see a troop of Rhesus baboons running off with 

 the dishes and bottles. 



From the moment that a young monkey is weaned he has to steal, 

 vol. xxii. 38 



