2 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that they are less concerned than those Caffres who bury only the 

 bodies of their chiefs and their children. 



Leadership among gorillas is decided by the law of the strongest. 

 When the young gorillas become able, they put the old chiefs out of 

 the way, and themselves take their places. So savage tribes dispatch 

 their old men when they are no longer of use, or when they stand in 

 the way of some ambitious aspirant. Monkeys fight by striking and 

 clinching with their hands, and by trying to bite ; they will clinch 

 one another just as athletes do. The gorilla, coming down on its 

 enemy, utters a cry like the war-cry of savages, and strikes upon its 

 chest with its hands, as Houzeau says athletes frequently do. When 

 attacked by an armed man, it aims to seize his gun or his club, and 

 having got it tries to break it ; but it does not try to use it as the 

 man does. Other monkeys try to avoid man, but when attacked by 

 him defend themselves courageously and throw stones and sticks at 

 him ; if they are on trees, breaking off limbs and fruits and nuts, and 

 whatever they can put their hands upon. The primitive arms of 

 mankind are likewise projectiles thrown by the hand like the Austra- 

 lian boomerang and the Indian's tomahawk, club, or lance. Free 

 as monkeys are in throwing sticks, they do not seem to have ever 

 come to the point of using their weapons as clubs or lances ; and it is 

 not consistent with their organization and habits that they should do 

 so. Their fortresses are tree-tops, from which flying sticks and stones 

 can do great execution, but to fight with clubs and lances they would 

 have to stand upon the ground, where they would be at a great dis- 

 advantage. Both races, then, have chosen or evolved the weapons 

 best suited to their anatomical organization. The habits of street- 

 boys still show that man's first weapon-using instinct was to throw 

 stones ; and with this in view we can fancy the early battles when 

 throngs of men fought by throwing showers of stones up into the 

 trees at the monkeys, who, in their turn, threw branches down at 

 them. Very few animals besides men and monkeys throw projectiles, 

 but that is because they are the only ones that have prehensile hands. 

 But elephants when angry will break down branches and pull up sap- 

 lings with their trunks ; and the ostrich kicks stones behind itself at 

 the faces of its pursuers. It is the anatomical organization of the 

 animal that determines its choice of arms. 



Monkeys are susceptible of showing spontaneous preferences and 

 friendships for others, even outside of their species, and can be, in their 

 affections for human companions, as capricious as children. They 

 share in man's aversion to snakes. In a state of nature they appear 

 to manifest aversion and hostility to other animals, and particularly to 

 other species of quadrumana. Orang-outangs exhibit an instinctive 

 animosity against other monkeys, and assail them in every way. The 

 tribe as a whole exhibit anger by nearly the same kind of acts as 

 men do. A chimpanzee of Du Chaillu's had marked preferences for 



