

APES AND MONKEYS 299 



reciprocity which teaches them to employ powers and means not 

 theirs by inheritance, and, finally, presses into their hands weapons 

 with which Nature did not supply them. Passions of all kinds, it 

 is true, often gain a victory over their circumspection; but these 

 very passions are proof of the liveliness of their sensations, or, 

 what comes to the same thing, of their mental activity. They are 

 as susceptible as children, as irritable as weak-minded men, and 

 thus very sensitive to every kind of treatment they may receive; to 

 love and dislike, to encouraging praise and chilling blame, to pleasant 

 flattery and wounding ridicule, to caresses and chastisement. Never- 

 theless they are not so easily managed, still less so easily trained to 

 anything, as a dog or any other clever domestic animal, for they are 

 self-willed in a high degree, and almost as conceited as human beings. 

 They learn without difficulty, but only when they wish to, and by 

 no means always when they ought to, for their self-conceit rebels 

 against any submission which they do not see to be to their own 

 advantage. They are quite aware that they are liable to be punished, 

 and may loudly express their disapprobation of the expected chas- 

 tisement beforehand, yet still refuse to do what is required of 

 them; while, on the other hand, they will execute it willingly and 

 with the liveliest expressions of understanding, when the task 

 happens to suit their humour. Whoever ventures to doubt their 

 self-esteem has only to watch their way of treating other animals. 

 Unless terrified by their strength and dangerousness, they invari- 

 ably regard other animals as playthings, whether they tease them 

 and play tricks upon them, or fondle them and load them with 

 caresses. 



Some examples, for which I myself can vouch, or which I know 

 to be thoroughly authentic, may strengthen the assertions I have 

 just made. 



As I was travelling in Bogosland, on my first ride into the moun- 

 tains I fell in with a large band of the Hamadryas baboons, referred 

 to by Sheikh Kemal el Din Demiri in his narrative. Drying their 

 streaming hair in the sunshine, they sat picturesquely grouped on 

 the highest points of a cliff, and, on being greeted with rifle bullets, 

 they beat an organized retreat and fled. Continuing my journey 



