THE MONKE Y FA MIL Y. 153 



immediate effect. Knowing this to be the case, whenever a monkey 

 was wanted, recourse was had to poisoned arrows. By this precau- 

 tion, the ill-fated animal's existence was not prolonged under the 

 painful anguish of a deadly wound. The wourali poison would act 

 as a balmy soporific, and the victim would be dead at your feet in a 

 very short space of time. 



In treating of the " pigmy ape," our author remarks, that troops 

 of them assemble together, and defend themselves from the attacks 

 of wild beasts in the desert, by throwing a cloud of sand behind 

 them, which blinks their pursuers, and facilitates their escape. Now, 

 this act of throwing dust in the eyes of a pursuing enemy, is a most 

 extraordinary feat on the part of the pigmy ape, and were it really 

 the case, it would argue a faculty in the monkey tribe far surpassing 

 that of instinct. But let me ask, in the first place, who ever saw 

 monkeys in a sandy desert ? or, if in decided opposition to their 

 ordinary habits, they had strayed out of bounds, pray what kind ot 

 pursuers were those which received the cloud of sand from the 

 monkeys' hands ? Were they wolves, or bears, or foxes, or jackals? 

 If any of this motley group of hunters, say, what were the hunters 

 themselves doing in a sandy desert, where no food could be procured, 

 either by the pursued or by the pursuers ? I have spent days in the 

 sandy deserts of Guiana they are called dry savannas but never 

 did I see a monkey there. Had I observed one, my astonishment 

 would have been beyond the power of words, and I should have 

 been utterly at a loss to account for the apparition. In the second 

 place, an assemblage of monkeys argues a tract of trees. Supposing, 

 then, that there had actually been a tract of trees in the desert, these 

 monkeys must have been deprived of their usual instinct, to descend 

 and take up a handful of sand in order to throw it at their pursuers, 

 and thus expose themselves to have their backs broken by the jaws 

 of a famished jackal, or to be made mince-meat of, and then swal- 

 lowed by a pack of ferocious wolves. Depend upon it, no bands of 

 monkeys and of wild beasts have ever yet had a hostile meeting, 

 or been engaged in hot pursuit of each other, or ever will have one 

 to the end of time. In the third place, I positively affirm that the 

 act of throwing things does not exist in any animal, except in man, 

 whose reasoning faculties enable him to perform the feat. But more 



