THE MENTAL FACULTIES OF MONKEYS. 19 



and many of them have very strong ones. Excepting the solitary and 

 taciturn orang-outang, the species which live in troops are chatterers, 

 and keep up a great hubbub. The principal tones of their noisy and 

 rapid language, with the frequent repetitions of the same sounds, may 

 also be found in the languages of the most savage peoples. They are, 

 for the most part, complex, guttural, and harsh articulations, with few 

 variations. But the alphabets of some of the African and Melane- 

 sian nations are not much richer. In both, it is generally the labials 

 which are wanting. Laughter is not wholly peculiar to men, for some 

 monkeys have a noisy and expansive laugh analogous to ours. Cook has 

 stated that natives of the New Hebrides express their joy by a kind 

 of guttural whistle, analogous to the jerky, rattling laugh of some 

 monkeys. Monkeys are also capable of showing sorrow and weeping ; 

 and it is possible to follow on their faces the equivalents of the physi- 

 ognomical changes which in man answer to the expression of his vari- 

 ous emotions. Among these are the drawing back of the corners of 

 the mouth and the contraction of the lower eyelid, which constitute 

 the monkey's smile, and the depression of the eyebrow and forehead 

 in anger. 



It can hardly be doubted at this day that monkeys have collective 

 feasts, which Houzeau compares with the new-moon festivals of the 

 negroes, Hottentots, and Papuans. Such assemblies take place among 

 South American monkeys, when, having eaten up the resources of one 

 place, they are about to emigrate to another. Duvancel witnessed, at 

 Deobund, in India, a great meeting of monkeys, which the natives 

 said took place regularly, after intervals of several years. They 

 came up by thousands, from different directions, all marching with 

 sticks in their hands. Arrived at the place of meeting, they threw 

 their sticks into a great pile. 



The feasts of the black chimpanzees of Africa are more like those 

 of the negroes. The animals come together, it may be, fifty at a time, 

 leaping, shouting, and drumming on old logs with sticks which they 

 hold in their hands and feet. They are taking their first lessons in 

 music, as it were ; and it is remarkable that that music is upon the 

 most rudimentary form of a drum, which is, besides, the universal 

 primitive musical instrument of the lowest savage human races, and 

 the only one which many of them possess. Tamed monkeys can beat 

 the drum and play with castanets. 



If we may believe popular stories, the quadrumana have some 

 kind of funeral ceremonies. The Chinese Pharmacopoeia speaks of a 

 species of which, when any one of the band dies, all the others attend 

 his funeral. A somewhat similar story, in which the dead monkey is 

 covered with branches of trees, is told in " Purchas's Pilgrimmes " — a 

 work which, however, is not of the highest scientific authority. But, 

 however exaggerated these stories may be, it is not probable that 

 monkeys are wholly indifferent to the death of their fellows — at least 



