, ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



to part with her monasso, though she lamented his 

 utter want of principles, like the Devin du Village : 



Helas ! que les plus coupables 

 To uj ours sont les plus aimables ! 



The Cercopitheais Maurus is the near relative of the 

 Indian macaques, beyond any doubt the most interesting 

 pets of their size. Without the pensive despondency of 

 the larger apes, the Cercopithecus Macacus has a large 

 share of their reasoning capacity: in whatever way we 

 may choose to explain his intelligence, we certainly can- 

 not ascribe it to instinct. The instinctive faculties of 

 animals are limited in the nature of their purpose, — 

 working in a certain direction with a perfect adaptation 

 of means to end, but narrowly objective, — while the sub- 

 jective capacity of our four-handed relatives is converti- 

 ble and pervertible to all possible good, bad, and frivo- 

 lous purposes: a monkey's mental process subserves the 

 intents of his individual caprice rather than the interests 

 of the species. On my last visit to Antwerp I bought 

 a young Siamese bonnet-macaque {Macacus radiatus), 

 whose conduct under circumstances to which no pos- 

 sible ancestral experiences could have furnished any 

 precedent has often convinced me that his intelligence 

 differs from the instinct of the most sagacious dog as 

 essentially as from the routine knack of a cell-building 

 insect. His predilection for a frugal diet equals that of 



