34 The Outline of Science 



happened to hit a projecting wire so as to make it vibrate. He 

 went on repeating the performance hundreds of times during 

 the next few days. Of course, he got nothing out of it. save fun, 

 but it was grist to his mental mill. "The fact of mental life is to 

 monkeys it own reward." The monkey's brain is "tender all over, 

 functioning throughout, set off in action by anything and every- 

 thing." 



Sheer Quickness 



Correlated with the quality of restless inquisitiveness and 

 delight in activity for its own sake there is the quality of quick- 

 ness. We mean not merely the locomotor agility that marks 

 most monkeys, but quickness of perception and plan. It is the 

 sort of quality that life among the branches will engender, where 

 it is so often a case of neck or nothing. It is the quality which 

 we describe as being on the spot, though the phrase has slipped 

 from its original moorings. Speaking of his Bonnet Monkey, 

 an Indian macaque, second cousin to the kind that lives on the 

 Rock of Gibraltar, Professor S. J. Holmes writes: "For keen- 

 ness of perception, rapidity of action, facility in forming good 

 practical judgments about ways and means of escaping pursuit 

 and of attaining various other ends, Lizzie had few rivals in the 

 animal world. . . . Her perceptions and decisions were so much 

 more rapid than my own that she would frequently transfer her 

 attention, decide upon a line of action, and carry it into effect 

 before I was aware of what she was about. Until I came' to 

 guard against her nimble and unexpected manoeuvres, she suc- 

 ceeded in getting possession of many apples and peanuts which 

 I had not intended to give her except upon the successful per- 

 formance of some task." 



Quick to Learn 



Quite fundamental to any understanding of animal be- 

 haviour is the distinction so clearly drawn by Sir Ray Lankester 

 between the "little-brain" type, rich in inborn or instinctive ca- 



