THE ELEMENTS OF MIND 231 



use stones as weights to steady their webs in times 

 of storm. Orangs throw sticks and stones at their 

 pursuers, and certain tribes of Abyssinian baboons, 

 when they go to battle with each other, carry 

 stones as missiles. Monkeys often use stones to 

 crack nuts with, and tame monkeys know very 

 well how to use a hammer when it is given to 

 them. In the London Zoological Gardens a 

 monkey with poor teeth kept a stone hidden in the 

 straw of its cage to crack its nuts with, and it 

 would not allow any other monkey to touch the 

 stone. ' Here,' says Darwin, in speaking of this 

 case, ' is the idea of property.' Monkeys also use 

 sticks as levers in prying open chests and lifting 

 heavy objects. Cuvier's orang used to carry a 

 chair across the room and stand on it to lift the 

 door-latch. Chimpanzees, who are very fond of 

 making a noise, have been seen standing around a 

 hollow log in the forest, beating it with sticks ; 

 and if we are to believe Emin Pasha, these in- 

 genious parodies of men sometimes carry torches 

 when they go at night on foraging expeditions. 

 The Indian elephant, when travelling, will some- 

 times turn aside and break off a leafy branch from 

 a roadside tree and carry it along in its trunk to 

 sweep off the flies. As Dr. Wesley Mills says in 

 his work on ' The Nature and Development of 

 Animal Intelligence,' * It was formerly believed 

 that animals cannot reason, but only those persons 

 who do not themselves reason about the subject, 

 with the facts before them, can any longer occupy 

 such a position.' 



