1 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Continent, and American monkeys, live in considerable troops, in a kind 

 of general sexual promiscuity, in which the love of the mothers for 

 their young, very strong while they need it in their weakness, does 

 not outlive their growth out of helpless infancy. Similar habits have 

 been noticed among some savage races ; and traditions are preserved 

 among many people of a time when family bonds did not exist. But 

 traces of more durable family bonds between monkeys of the same 

 blood seem to exist among the chimpanzees and gorillas, where the ap- 

 pearance of particular and exclusive affection is combined w r ith rivalry 

 with the members of other families. Savage, in the " Boston Journal 

 of Natural History," tells of a female chimpanzee which was observed 

 in a tree with the male and a pair of young of different sexes. She 

 first started to hurry down and run into the thicket with the male 

 and the young female ; but, seeing the young male left behind, she 

 went back for him and had taken him in her arms when she was shot. 

 Houzeau, in his " Etudes " (" Studies on the Mental Faculties of Ani- 

 mals as compared with those of Men"), compares this trait with the in- 

 difference with which the New Zealand mother saw Cook take away 

 her son, probably forever, as she was expressly informed. Houzeau also 

 finds traces of paternal affection in the protection that old anthropoid 

 apes accord to the members of the polygamous tribe of which they are 

 chiefs. This kind of affection can, however, hardly be said to exist 

 among all men. There are numerous tribes in which the fathers do 

 not know their own children, in which the names pass in the female 

 line, and where a man's heirs are the children of his sisters. Striking 

 examples of conjugal love are sometimes shown among monogamous 

 monkeys. An incident in point is that of a female of an American 

 species which, tired of holding her young one, called up the male to 

 relieve her. Another story is that of the male in the Jardin des Plantes 

 which became inconsolable and starved itself to death after its com- 

 panion died. 



In the way of language, monkeys manifest their passions, emotions, 

 desires, and fears, by cries and gestures, emphasized by significant ac- 

 cents, which vary with the species. Monkeys and children, together 

 with savages and uneducated people of civilized nations, manifest an 

 inclination to mimic the gestures and motions of all persons whom 

 they see. We think that this trait is especially prominent in monkeys, 

 but thousands of instances might be cited to show that mankind, old 

 and young, shares it with them. The attitude and the sagacity of 

 monkeys are so human that some savages believe that it is out of mali- 

 ciousness that they do not talk. In fact, a monkey might pass for a 

 dumb man, because he does not articulate the consonants clearly, as we 

 do ; but not all men have this power of articulation in an equal degree. 

 We have stammerers by birth and by habit. Some savage tribes have 

 a scanty alphabet complicated by clicks and nasal and guttural sounds 

 that can not be imagined till they are heard. All monkeys have voices, 



