USE OF NATURAL INSTRUMENTS. 415 



itself from the irksome bondage of straps ' by picking out 

 the threads by which the straps were sewn to the buckles, 

 and so rendering the fastenings useless' (Wood). Mother 

 monkeys in Abyssinia dress the hair of their young (Mans- 

 field Parkyns). The macaco monkey shows great dexterity 

 in opening boxes (Buffon). The marmozet uses its fingers 

 in turning over the pages of a book, which it pretends to 

 read. The collared callithrix, disliking tobacco smoke, 

 snatches its master's cigar from his mouth (Cassell). A 

 female gorilla in the Dresden Zoological Gardens takes off 

 and replaces, for the amusement of visitors, the boots of her 

 keeper (' Nature '). A capuchin monkey took the hinges off 

 the door of its cage in order to escape. 'No matter how 

 firmly they were fixed, he was sure before long to extract the 

 staples, pull out the nails, and so open the door ' (Wood). 

 The Durga monkeys of Benares occasionally * snatch some 

 particularly noticeable turban off the wearer's head,' among 

 visitors to the monkey temple of that city, and now and 

 then they ' pelt passers-by with remarkably good aim.' l 



Mandrills that live on scorpions use their fingers and 

 hands to lift the stones under which their prey conceal 

 themselves (Smith). 



While giving such instances of what may be called 

 ' handiness J among the Quadrumana, it is desirable to con- 

 trast them with a parallel series of illustrations of what may 

 equally appropriately be denominated the ' handlessness ' of 

 man. Inability to use his hands deftly, or otherwise than 

 awkwardly, is not only characteristic of many individuals in 

 the most highly civilised communities, but of whole races 

 of man savage or semi-savage. Thus Monteiro tells us, 

 speaking of the negroes of western tropical Africa, that 

 ' some of the actions of the blacks are exactly the same as 

 those performed by monkeys. In using their hands or 

 fingers to clean or polish a piece of brass-work, for instance, 

 the feeble and nerveless manner of holding the bit of oiled 

 rag, and the whole action of the hand and arm is strikingly 

 like that of a monkey when it rubs its hands on the ground 

 when they are sticky or dirty. Their manner of sliding their 



1 'Graphic,' January 5, 1876, p. 123. 

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