QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE. 601 



pet with his brass collar and sleek pouch is merely scrutinized with 

 silent envy. The half-grown bhunder-monkeys are so pretty that they 

 are often domesticated, but their relatives dislike to part with them 

 from motives that have nothing to do with " philoprogenitiveness." 



The holy children are their mediators, their apple and bread win- 

 ners. The entreaties of the little beggars are not easy to resist : they 

 will climb you after the manner of pet squirrels, embrace you with 

 one arm and beg with the other, accompanying their gestures with a 

 deprecatory mumble that becomes strangely expressive, as if they 

 were pleading extenuating circumstances, if you offer to strike them. 

 Even the idol-hating Mussulman is thus often beguiled into a liber- 

 ality which his conscience may be far from approving. If the little 

 spongers have struck a bonanza, they swallow in situ all they can find 

 room for, well knowing that upon their return the contents of their 

 cheek-pouches will be claimed by their relatives, for even a mother- 

 monkey has no hesitation in plundering her own child in that way. 

 To avoid coercive measures, the poor kids surrender their savings vol- 

 untarily and with great dispatch at the approach of the ruthless parent. 

 Like our artist-mendicants who keep a beggar-boy ad captandum, old 

 baboons sometimes kidnap a baby of another tribe, keep a strict watch 

 on its movements, but urge it with slaps and grunts to work the pass- 

 ers-by. Crippled baboons, too, are a most welcome acquisition to any 

 clique. These twice-worthy objects of charity have their regular head- 

 quarters, where they can be found at any time of the day surrounded 

 by eupeptic relatives who hope to participate in the largess of the 

 pious. The poorest huckster will stop his cart in a gate-way to hand 

 his tribute to a decrepit bhunder-monkey who supplicates him with 

 outstretched hands. No true believer must stint his gifts upon such 

 occasions ; and so well does the hairy mendicant know the stringency 

 of that duty that he flies out into a paroxysm of virtuous wrath if any 

 passer-by should dare to disregard his appeal. The relatives promptly 

 yield their aid, and fruit-carts are in danger of being monkey-mobbed 

 if the driver hesitates to propitiate their resentment by a liberal con- 

 tribution. 



In a sparsely settled but tolerably fertile country animal refugees 

 soon accustom themselves to the vicissitudes of their wild life. The 

 ten months' drought of 1877, which almost exterminated the do- 

 mestic cattle of Southern Brazil, was braved by the pampa cows, 

 whom experience had taught to derive their water-supply from bul- 

 bous roots, cactus-leaves, and excavations in the moist river-sand. 

 Solid food is only a secondary requirement ; with a good supply of 

 drinking-water many animals would beat Dr. Tanner's time. But 

 how the Syrian Khamr dogs manage to make out a living only the 

 gods of the desert know. They rough it in regions where no human 

 hunter would discover a trace of game, and where water is as scarce 



