lO 



NATURE 



[September 29, 1892 



'drink.' My first effort caught his attention and caused 

 him to turn and look at me ; he then arose and answered 

 me with the same word, and came at once to the front of 

 the cage. He looked at me as if in doubt, and I repeated 

 the word ; he responded with the same, and turned to a 

 small pan in his cage which he took up and placed near 

 the door, through which the keeper usually passed his 

 food, returned to me, and uttered the word again. I asked 

 the keeper for some milk, which he did not have, but 

 brought me some water instead. ... I allowed the 

 monkey to dip his hand into the glass, and he would 

 then lick the water from his fingers and reach again. I 

 kept the glass out of reach of his hand, and he would 

 repeat the sound earnestly, and look at me beseechingly, 

 as if to say, ' Please give me some more.' I was thus 

 convinced that the word which I had translated 'milk,' 

 must also mean ' water,' and from this and other tests I 

 at last determined that it meant ' drink ' in its broad 

 sense, and possibly ' thirst.' It evidently expressed his 

 desire for something with which to allay his thirst. The 

 sound is very difficult to imitate, and quite impossible to 

 write exactly." 



We submit that these passages seem to indicate that 

 Mr. Garner has not yet, in this matter, reached results 

 which have much definiteness and precision. It would 

 seem that the Capuchin emits sounds which are mainly 

 expressive of a craving for something, and perhaps vaguely 

 indicate that this something is water or other drink ; 

 though with regard to this objective implication we must 

 remember that one of the capuchins "seemed to connect 

 this sound to every kindly office done him." 



This is one of the nine words or sounds belonging to 

 Capuchins. Another is the sound which Mr. Garner has 

 translated " food." Of it he says : — 



" I observed that this sound seemed to be a salutation 

 or peace-making term with them, which I attributed to 

 the fact that food was the central thought of every 

 monkey's life, and that consequently that word would 

 naturally be the most important of his whole speech." 



Another sound which was emitted by a monkey when 

 a storm was going on, and which, when reproduced by 

 the phonograph, made the little fellow look out of window, 

 Mr. Garner translated " weather," or thought that it " in 

 some way alluded to the state of the weather." But he 

 does not seem quite clear about it. 



" I am not sure," he says, " how far it may be relied 

 upon as a separate word. It was so closely connected 

 to the speech of discontent or pain, that I have not been 

 able since to separate the sounds, and I finally abandoned 

 it as a separate word ; but reviewing my work, and re- 

 calling the peculiar conduct of this monkey and the con- 

 ditions attending it, I believe it is safe to say that he had 

 in mind the state of the weather." 



Three other sounds are plainly emotional in their 

 nature — (i) an alarm sound, used under stress of great 

 fear, high in pitch, shrill and piercing ; (2) a sound 

 written thus " e-c-g-k " expressive of apprehension ; and 

 (3) a sound which is like a guttural whisper "c-h-I" 

 expressive of the approach of something which the 

 monkey does not fear. 



Such are some of the sounds which Mr. Garner mis- 

 names (as we think) the " speech " of monkeys, and 

 concerning which he exclaims : — 



" Standing on this frail bridge of speech, I see into 

 that broad field of life and thought which lies beyond 

 the confines of our care, and into which, through the 

 gates that I have now unlocked, may soon be borne the 



NO. I 196, VOL. 46] 



sunshine of human intellect. What prophet now can 

 foretell the relations which may yet obtain between the 

 human race and those inferior forms which fill some 

 place in the design, and execute some function in the 

 economy of nature ?" 



This, however, is one of those reflections which savour 

 of the prattle of the parlour tea-table rather than the 

 sober discussion of the study. We should rather say 

 that Mr. Garner's investigations, if followed up in a 

 spirit of critical accuracy, give promise of enabling him 

 to extend our knowledge of the sounds emitted by 

 monkeys — sounds which, we gather from his descriptions, 

 are mainly, if not entirely, of emotional origin, but which 

 may perhaps carry with them a more or less definite 

 objective import. We are of opinion that such extension 

 of our knowledge of these emotional or other sounds 

 may prove a definite and valuable contribution to science, 

 and we therefore heartily wish Mr. Garner all success in 

 the prosecution of his inquiry. C. LI. M. 



BEE-KEEPING. 

 Bees for Pleasure and Profit. By G, Gordon Samson. 



(London : Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1892.) 

 •' TTOW doth the little busy bee, &c. ? " asked Dr. 

 Watts a hundred and fifty years ago. So long 

 as straw skeps predominated, the problem was insoluble. 

 The bees improved each shining hour in perfunctory 

 fashion, building crooked combs, confusing brood with 

 honey, exhausting their republic with superfluous swarms, 

 dying finally in the smoke- reek of an old pair of corduroys,, 

 enriched for malarious exhalation by more than one 

 generation of bucolic wearers. . With frame hives came 

 an Earthly Providence to answer the pious query; to 

 control the economy of the hive, to prescribe the number 

 of drones, multiply or restrict the queens, straighten out 

 the combs, combine defective stocks into a single opulent 

 society, disintegrate an overgrown community into new 

 and independent nuclei, supplement the tardy growth of 

 brood or honey, increase fourfold the productiveness of 

 every hive. It is as an adept in Providential operations that 

 Mr. Samson writes. He renounces scientific erudition ; 

 and his allusion to " powerful microscopes," his reliance 

 on " wonderful provisions of Nature," his belief that by 

 confining their visits to one kind of flower in a single 

 journey the bees prevent the hybridization of species, 

 show his disclaimer to be correct ; but apiarian science 

 was brought up to date last year in Mr. Cowan's admirable 

 book (Nature, vol. 43, p. 578), leaving room for just such 

 a practical treatise on manipulation and management as 

 Mr. Samson is competent to give. 



No repetition can exhaust the interest attaching to the 

 strange life-history of the hive-bees. While the solitary 

 bees are created male and female, there appears in the 

 gregarious bees a third sex, the workers or neuters (not 

 neutrals^ as Mr. Samson calls them), having rudimentary 

 ovaries and spermatotheca, incapable of laying eggs, with 

 the ovipositor modified into a sting ; themselves, in 

 queenless hives, sometimes developed into more ad- 

 vanced yet still imperfect females, known as fertile 

 workers, and producing only drones. In ordinary cases 

 a single queen is the mother of the entire hive, bearing 

 drone eggs only in her virgin state, fecundated once for 

 all by a solitary nuptial act for the production of more 



