426 GENERAL ZOOLOGY 



animal instinctively clawed at the side of the box, in the 

 course of which series of movements the door would usually 

 be opened sooner or later. If the animal was replaced in the 

 box again and again, the number of useless clawing actions 

 gradually decreased, till finally the mechanism was operated 

 as soon as the animal was put in the box. If the animal could 

 reason, it would be expected that the box would be opened at 

 once after its first successful attempt; so Professor Thorndike 

 says : " This sort of history is not the history of a reasoning 

 animal. It is the history of an animal who meets a certain 

 situation with a series of instinctive acts ; included without 

 design among these acts is one which brings freedom and food." 



With this general conclusion Professor C. Lloyd Morgan, 

 in his Animal Behavior, agrees. This author says: "As at 

 present advised, therefore, I see no reason for withdrawing 

 from the position provisionally taken up. The utilization of 

 chance experience, without the framing and application of 

 an organized scheme of knowledge, appears to be the pre- 

 dominant method of animal intelligence." 



In their mental attributes monkeys seem to occupy an 

 intermediate position between man and the lower mammals. 

 Some of the observations made on this subject have been 

 thus summed by Professor R. Ramsay Wright, of Toronto 

 University. " Sympathy has been observed in many forms. 

 The female gorilla has been said to die of grief when the 

 young is taken away ; orangs have come in a body to beg for 

 the corpse of a dead companion, gibbons for a wounded com- 

 rade. A female gibbon has been observed to wash the face 

 of her young, a Cebus to brush off flies from the face of hers 

 while sleeping, and all monkeys assist each other with the 

 utmost zeal in the search for intruders in their hair. They 

 have been noticed to feed each other, to carry food to sick 

 monkeys, and to adopt orphans. More remarkable than all, 

 a monkey has been seen to throw a rope to a comrade who 



