NATURAL HISTORY OF 



mind, he was incapable of extending the power farther, 

 or of reasoning upon that action, during the perfor- 

 mance of which his intellect had gone through several 

 distinct processes. All their actions in a state of 

 confinement may be traced to the same source, while 

 those in a state of nature will be more akin to instinct, 

 and will be performed under the impulses of the 

 various passions. 



Cunning joined with caution, an inquisitive and 

 prying turn, and imitativeness, are the strong charac- 

 ters in the disposition of the whole family. All 

 these faculties and propensities become more developed 

 in a state of confinement, and consequently of tuition, 

 than in their natural wildness ; and while the first, in 

 both states, is indispensable for their preservation, 

 it is by the influence of the others that they are prin- 

 cipally indebted to confinement, and the parts they are 

 made to perform in the beggarly dramas performed in 

 the streets of our great towns. Their power of imita- 

 tion is very great, and often ludicrous in the extreme, 

 from the expressive face, and human-like form of the 

 upper parts. This talent has even been said to have 

 been used to their own destruction ; we have heard 

 of monkeys cutting their throats, in imitation of the 

 feigned action of the person whom they annoyed, 

 and of one who killed himself by infusing a paper of 

 tobacco with milk and sugar, instead of tea, and drink- 

 ing it as he had observed some sick sailor do. How 

 far these are true we shall not attempt to decide; 



