OUR FOUR-HANDED RELATIVES. 



59 



" A flock of these animals may be seen frequently con- 

 gregated on the roof of a native hut; and some years 

 ago the child of a European clergyman stationed at 

 Tillipally, having been left on the ground by the nurse, 

 was so teased and bitten by them as to cause its death." 

 (Sir Emerson Tennent's " Ceylon," vol. i. p. 132.) 



Monkeys seem to believe in the efficacy of vicarious 

 atonement. A little yellow bitch, whose couch my pet 

 macaque has shared for the last two years, has to suf- 

 fer grievous indignities as his monkeyship's scapegoat. 

 Whenever I detect him in any misdeed, he turns upon his 

 partner with a look of severe disapprobation, and if his 

 iniquities bring him to grief he " takes it out" of her, with 

 a promptitude that has taught her to take to her heels 

 as often as I arraign him for an unpardonable offence, 

 and sometimes even during the perpetration of his sins. 



As exemplar of the virtues often attributed to a state 

 of nature, monkeys are, indeed, rather an indifferent suc- 

 cess. Their standing in the peculiar graces of self-denial 

 and self-abasement is certainly below the Christian stand- 

 ard ; but, for all that, one cannot help observing the ways 

 and tricks of the little sinners with an interest entirely 

 distinct from the pleasure attached to the study of natural 

 history in general. Can it be something more than the 

 mere scientific curiosity of the professional zoologist? 

 The question is perhaps answered by Arthur Schopen- 

 hauer's definition of a representative monkey : " An epit- 

 ome of man without the human faculty of dissimulation." 



