THE MONKE Y FA MIL Y. 153 



immediate effect. Knowing this to be the case, whenever a monkey 

 was wanted, recourse was had to poisoned arrows. By this precau- 

 tion, the ill-fated animal's existence was not prolonged under the 

 painful anguish of a deadly wound. The wourali poison would act 

 as a balmy soporific, and the victim would be dead at your feet in a 

 very short space of time. 



In treating of the " pigmy ape," our author remarks, that troops 

 of them assemble together, and defend themselves from the attacks 

 of wild beasts in the desert, by throwing a cloud of sand behind 

 them, which blinks their pursuers, and facilitates their escape. Now, 

 this act of throwing dust in the eyes of a pursuing enemy, is a most 

 extraordinary feat on the part of the pigmy ape, and were it really 

 the case, it would argue a faculty in the monkey tribe far surpassing 

 that of instinct. But let me ask, in the first place, who ever saw 

 monkeys in a sandy desert? or, if in decided opposition to their 

 ordinary habits, they had strayed out of bounds, pray what kind 01" 

 pursuers were those which received the cloud of sand from the 

 monkeys' hands ? Were they wolves, or bears, or foxes, or jackals ? 

 If any of this motley group of hunters, say, what were the hunters 

 themselves doing in a sandy desert, where no food could be procured, 

 either by the pursued or by the pursuers ? I have spent days in the 

 sandy deserts of Guiana they are called dry savannas but never 

 did I see a monkey there. Had I observed one, my astonishment 

 would have been beyond the power of words, and I should have 

 been utterly at a loss to account for the apparition. In the second 

 place, an assemblage of monkeys argues a tract of trees. Supposing, 

 then, that there had actually been a tract of trees in the desert, these 

 monkeys must have been deprived of their usual instinct, to descend 

 and take up a handful of sand in order to throw it at their pursuers, 

 and thus expose themselves to have their backs broken by the jaws 

 of a famished jackal, or to be made mince-meat of, and then swal- 

 lowed by a pack of ferocious wolves. Depend upon it, no bands of 

 monkeys and of wild beasts have ever yet had a hostile meeting, 

 or been engaged in hot pursuit of each other, or ever will have one 

 to the end of time. In the third place, I positively affirm that the 

 act of throwing things does not exist in any animal, except in man, 

 whose reasoning faculties enable him to perform the feat. But more 



