246 A NATURALIST IN HIMALAYA 



which had no offspring of her own. One day she 

 happened to find a pair of young kittens only a few 

 days old. She immediately took this unnatural 

 offspring under her charge ; she nursed them with 

 the greatest care and would allow no one to take 

 them from her. It illustrated how easily the maternal 

 instinct becomes vitiated when it cannot fulfil its 

 normal course. Another incident seemed to show 

 how quickly an instinct acquired by the parents may 

 become innate in the young. These monkeys dread 

 the sight of a gun. They have learnt to know its 

 power, and are terrified if they see a weapon pointed 

 at them. But a very young monkey was on one 

 occasion chained in my garden. It could never 

 have seen a gun, and certainly could scarcely have 

 learnt what the power of a firearm meant. Yet 

 the very first time that I raised a gun towards this 

 little animal it burst into the greatest frenzy and 

 alarm and commenced to hiss and leap upon its 

 chain. It showed little fear of a stick even thouoh 

 threatened with a beating, yet if the stick was directed 

 towards it in the attitude of a gun then all its passions 

 were again aroused. Are we to conclude that this 

 little creature was born with the dread of a gun as one 

 of the innate instincts of its nature? It had no ex- 

 perience of firearms in its own short life, and unless 

 it was taught these dangers at a very tender age by 

 some of the older members of the herd, it must have 

 inherited from its parents that instinctive dread which 

 they had learnt by experience throughout the preceding 

 generations. 



When herds of these monkeys are observed from 

 below feeding on a mountain side, it is not unusual to 



