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ANIMAL EATIOCINATION 



Do ANIMALS KEASON? 



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As I see you have of late published letters from several 

 correspondents giving instances of cleverness on the part 

 of animals, may I contribute the following? I had a pet 

 monkey in India, and one day I placed a looking-glass on 

 the ground in front of him to see what he would make of it. 

 He saw his reflection in the glass, and, supposing it to 

 be another monkey, he sprang round to the back of the 

 glass, but of course found nothing there. He came back 

 and looked at the reflection again, and again rushed round 

 and was again disappointed. He then came back, fixed 

 his gaze on the monkey in the glass, and kept him in sight 

 while he stretched his paw round to the back of the glass 

 and felt for him. Another day I was sitting in the 

 verandah receiving the report of my company, and the 

 monkey was chained to a pillar of the verandah. A soldier 

 was standing before me with his rifle at the order. The 

 monkey's curiosity was excited by the rifle, and he tried 

 to reach it, but the length of his tether did not admit of 

 his touching it. He looked about him, picked up a stick 

 that was lying on the ground, reached out, and with it 

 tapped the barrel and stock of the rifle as if to discover 

 what it was made of. Mr. Ainslie Hight's story of 

 Wagner's parrot, and his query, "Are birds capable of 

 irony?" recalls to mind the story of the sutler's parrot in 

 " Le Desastre," by the brothers Margueritte. While the 



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