OF WILD ANIMALS 91 



flow was due to start on the second day after the infant's 

 arrival. 



Day and night the baby was jealously confined in that 

 massive and powerful groin, and under too much pressure! 

 When the baby cried, and kicked, and struggled to get free, 

 Suzette would nervously rearrange her straw bed, carefully 

 pick from the tiny fingers every straw that they had clutched, 

 and settle down again. If the struggle was soon renewed, 

 Suzette would change the infant over to the other groin, and 

 close upon it as before. 



Sleeping or waking, walking, sitting or lying down, she 

 held it there. If we attempted to touch the infant, the mother 

 instantly became savage and dangerous. Not one human 

 finger was permitted to touch it. For hours, and for days, we 

 anxiously watched for nursing to begin; but in vain. At last 

 we became almost frantic from the spectacle of the infant 

 being slowly starved to death because the mother did not 

 realize that it needed her milk, and that she alone could 

 promote nursing. Her mother instinct utterly failed to supply 

 the link that alone could connect infancy to motherhood, and 

 furnish life. 



Of course this failure was due to poor Suzette's artificial 

 life, and unnatural surroundings. Had she been all alone, in 

 the depths of a tropical forest, Nature would have proceeded 

 along her usual lines. But in our Primate House, Suzette felt 

 that her infant was surrounded by a host of strange enemies, 

 from whom it must be strongly and persistently guarded and 

 defended. That was the idea that completely dominated her 

 mind, ruled out all human help, and blocked the main process 

 of nature. 



During the eight days that the infant lived, it was able to 

 reach her breast and nurse only once, for about one minute; 

 and then back it went to its prison, where it died from sheer 

 lack of nourishment. 



In 1920, that same history was repeated, except that on 



