22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



will divide their trinkets among one another, or quarrel about them, 

 and dress themselves up in them in a grotesque style ; and then, like 

 children, having become tired of them, will leave them hanging on 

 the branches or let them fall to the ground, and care no more for 

 them. They seem to be thieves by instinct, for the mere pleasure of 

 stealing, when they are not catering to their appetites ; and they are 

 capable of sacking a house and carrying off everything movable in 

 it with the system and concert of a band of robbers. They observe 

 a kind of discipline in their operations, and post their scouts, to in- 

 form them in season when it is time to run away ; and this, when 

 warned, they can do with wonderful simultaneousness. 



Uiloa saw monkeys joining hands, six or eight together, to ford 

 rivers. Dampier tells a very interesting story of the performances in 

 this line of the monkeys of the Isthmus of Panama. We can see 

 monkeys repeating the same exercise on a small scale for amusement 

 in zoological gardens. 



Travelers say that monkeys take up those of their number which 

 are wounded in their battles. Savage observed the same thing done 

 for chimpanzees when they were shot, and says that, when the wound 

 does not immediately pi-oduce death, his fellows have been seen to put 

 their hands over it to stop its bleeding, and, if this did not succeed, 

 to apply leaves and sod. Houzeau relates an analogous story on the 

 authority of the New-Hebrides islanders. 



As men appropriate particular territories to themselves to the exclu- 

 sion of all others, so the larger monkeys will drive away other animals 

 from grounds they wish to occupy, with an efficiency that speaks well 

 for their discipline and tactics. 



The acuteness of the perception of domestic animals to approach- 

 ing danger is well known. Monkeys exhibit it in an equal degree. Le 

 Vaillant says that the bavian which went with him into Africa was 

 his most trustworthy guardian, and signalized the approach of the 

 slightest danger, whether by day or by night, even before the dogs 

 could discover it ; while the dogs acknowledged it their superior 

 in this faculty, and at its look or nod would spring to this side or 

 that, according as it indicated. The same monkey, though tamed, 

 would answer the cries of the wild ones of its species when it heard 

 them in the woods, but was afraid of them when it saw them. All 

 travelers testify to the intelligence of monkeys in a wild state, and 

 have much to say of the trouble they have in guarding against their 

 devices. It is not considered safe to attack their troops, for they will 

 defend themselves in concert and with energy, and in apparent secu- 

 rity, from the tree-tops, where they are afraid of nothing but a gun. 



The curiosity of animals is not always passive, and the attentive 

 attitude they show is not always the effect of astonishment. They 

 like to imitate, and to imitate they must observe. An orang-outang 

 in the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris, being one day visited by Flourens 



