OUR FOUR-HANDED RELATIVES. 



43 



the insincerity of a caress or good nature under a gruff 

 mask by symptoms that escape the human eye. Still, 

 their conduct toward visitors depends somewhat upon 

 circumstances : in private interviews they treat strangers 

 with a cautious reserve, often evidently suggested by 

 the idea of having been surrendered into the hands of 

 an enemy, possibly of a new master whose good will it 

 might be advisable to conciliate. 



Humility is said to be the virtue of those who have 

 no other merit. Judging from the analogies of the brute 

 creation, the rule would seem to admit of occasional 

 exceptions : some very meek and lowly animals are 

 by no means without parts; but the most gifted of all, 

 the doubly-ambidextrous four-hander, is certainly the 

 most self-asserting. In a congregation of miscellaneous 

 mammals a monkey at once assumes command; he 

 knows his rank, and no Arabian sheikh in an assembly 

 of African chieftains is swifter in resenting any disre- 

 spect to the Ccesarea tnajestas of his mental superiority. 

 A female Javanese Manki, the smallest variety of the 

 genus Cercopithecus, managed for several months to lord 

 it over the occupants of my zoo-box, till her supremacy 

 was disputed by a Scotch terrier, who had to maintain 

 a national dignity of his own and declined to accept a 

 passive role in a game of leap-frog. But he soon ascer- 

 tained that a practical joke can be a lesser evil : the peace 

 of his life was gone ; he could not eat, drink, or romp 

 without awakening the anathemas of the Manki, who 



