288 INDIVIDUALITY. 



3. In those most intimately associated with man. 



Thus monkeys and apes, as a group, are characterised by 

 their vivacity, cleverness, mischievousness, impetuousness, 

 inquisitiveness. Some genera or species thereof, however, 

 possess what may be termed a negative character, in so far 

 as there is a conspicuous absence of the mental or moral 

 peculiarities of the great group to which they belong. Thus 

 Baird points out that even some of those monkeys usually 

 supposed to be vivacious, and rapid equally in their ideation 

 and action, are in reality slow in both. They are slow in 

 understanding a thing in realising their own position, for 

 instance, in reference to danger and equally slow, perhaps 

 fatally so, in taking proper action even when they do realise 

 their peril. Some of them, no doubt and this is certainly 

 true of many other animals may be ' slow, but sure ' slow 

 in order to be sure, thinking and acting deliberatel} 7 , action 

 being characterised by caution and propriety when there is 

 a conviction of its necessity. There is said to be an absence 

 of the usual curiosity, attachment to persons, and gratitude 

 of the tribe in the Tamarin monkey, and of the habitual 

 petulance and malice in the marmozet (Cassell). 



According to Professor Mower, the Indian and African 

 elephants, two different zoological species, have different 

 mental as well as physical characters, the African being 

 e bolder, quicker, and more obstinate ' than the other. Here 

 we have an illustration of the adoption by a zoologist of 

 a psychical character as an aid in the diagnosis, descrip- 

 tion, and nomenclature of a species. It is not by any means 

 a good illustration, inasmuch as mere degrees of boldness 

 and obstinacy are not characters of a very definite value. 

 But it is an admission that mental characters may in some 

 cases take their place alongside of, or subsidiary to, struc- 

 tural ones in zoological classification. Dr. Baird, too, speaks 

 of the different dispositions that characterise different species 

 of the same genus for instance, in the gayal and buffalo. 



Ant-genera, and species differ as remarkably in intelli- 

 gence, including their power of rapid intercommunication of 

 ideas, as do many animals much higher in the zoological 

 scale ; and their comparative superiority or inferiority in this 



