134 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON 



* The animal came to the door of the tent, and, finding 

 threats of no avail, began a lamentable moaning, and 

 by the most expressive gestures seemed to beg for the 

 dead body. It was given him ; he took it sorrowfully 

 in his arms and bore it away to his expecting com- 

 panions.' " Successful, like Priam, it would be interesting 

 to know what the monkeys did with the corpse. Mr. 

 Romanes calls this tale "remarkable." It is so, indeed, 

 but not in the sense which he intends. Had the apes 

 made gestures, such as are used in ballets, stronger words 

 could not have been used to describe them than " most 

 expressive'' It was, perhaps, but an accident which 

 prevented the subsequent movements of the apes being 

 seen and interpreted as " truly funereal ; " seeing that 

 Professor Biichner* has credited insects with the per- 

 formance of pious funereal rites. He describes to us two 

 bees flying out of a hive, " carrying between them the 

 corpse of a dead comrade," who, after they had found a 

 suitable hole, " carefully pushed in the body head fore- 

 most, and placed above it two small stones [!]. They 

 then watched for about a minute before they flew away"! 



Mr. Romanes cites, with analogous credulity, an 

 account of a monkey shot by Captain Johnson, which 

 " instantly ran down to the lowest branch of a tree, as if 

 he were going to fly at me, stopped suddenly, and coolly 

 put his paw to the part wounded, covered with blood, 

 and held it out for me to see." 



We are yet further told f of a " closely similar case," 

 recorded by Sir William Hoste, as follows : — 



* In his sensational romance, entitled, " Mind in Animals," p. 249. 

 t p. loi. 



