MENTAL LIFE OF APES AND MONKEYS 269 



over his head before projecting the missile, standing erect 

 the while." At a later period Miss Romanes says of him: 

 " When he throws things at people now he first runs up the 

 bars of the clothes-horse; he seems to have found out that 

 people do not care much for having things thrown at their 

 feet, and he is not strong enough to throw such heavy objects 

 as a poker or a hammer at peoples' heads; he therefore 

 mounts to a level with his enemy's head, and thus succeeds 

 in sending his missile to a greater height and also to a greater 

 distance." Darwin states in his "Descent of Man:" "As 

 I have repeatedly seen, a chimpanzee will throw any object 

 at hand at a person who offends him." And other well 

 attested observations could be quoted to the same effect. 

 Despite the contention of Wasmann we must admit, I 

 think, that the use of objects by apes as weapons of attack 

 rests upon a fair basis of testimony. 



A certain degree of foresight seemed to be manifested 

 by Miss Romanes' monkey in the way in which he disen- 

 tangled his chain when it became wound around a clothes 

 horse which was given him to run upon. "He looks at it 

 intently and pulls it with his fingers this way and that, and 

 when he sees how the turns are taken, he deliberately goes 

 round and round the bars, first this way, then that, until 

 the chain is quite disentangled. He often carries his 

 chain grasped in his tail and held high over his back to keep 

 it from getting in the way of his feet." 



Mr. Hobhouse's Jimmy was not so circumspect. "He 

 would, however, as a rule, undo a single twist by retracing 

 his steps, and sometimes would undo a more complicated one 

 by a developed form of the method of trial and error, which 

 consisted hi this : that each tune he felt the cord shortening 

 on him, he would go back the way he had come." This 

 method was usually effective, but Jimmy showed little 



