CHAPTER VIII 



Caged in an African Jungle — The Cage and its Contents — Its 

 Location — Its Purpose — The Jungle — The Great Forest — 



Its Grandeur — Its Silence 



IT will be of interest to the reader to know the manner 

 m which I have pursued the study of monkeys in a 

 state of nature, and the means employed to that end. I, 

 therefore, give a brief outline of my life in a cage in the 

 heart of the African jungle, where I went in order to watch 

 the denizens of the forest when free from all restraint. 



Having for several years devoted much time to the study 

 of the speech and the habits of monkeys in captivity, I 

 formulated a plan of going to their native haunts to study 

 them under more favorable conditions. 



In the course of my labors up to that time, I had found 

 that monkeys of the highest physical types have also higher 

 types of speech than those of the inferior kinds. In ac- 

 cordance with this fact, it was logical to infer that in the 

 anthropoid apes — they being next to man in the scale of 

 nature — would be found the faculty of speech developed 

 in a higher degree than in the monkeys. The chief object 

 of my study was to learn the lanofuasre of animals. The 

 great apes appeared to be the best subjects for that pur- 

 pose, so I turned my attention to them. The gorilla was 

 said to be the most nearly like man, and the chimpanzee 



60 



