26 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 



the two I abstracted one of them, and when he 

 failed to find it he began to search for it and 

 seemed quite unwilling to proceed without it. 

 He would put the one back into the box and take 

 it out again as if in hope that it might find the 

 other. I helped him to look for the missing 

 marbles, and, of course, soon found them. 

 When he learned that I could find the lost mar- 

 bles he would appeal to me as soon as he would 

 miss them, and in several instances he would 

 take his little black fingers and open my lips 

 to see if I had concealed them in my mouth — the 

 place where all monkeys conceal what they wish 

 to keep in safety from other monkeys, who never 

 venture to put their fingers into one another's 

 mouths, and when any article is once lodged, in a 

 monkey's mouth it is safe from the reach of all 

 the tribe. I repeated this until I felt quite sure 

 of the ability of my subject to count three, and 

 I then increased the number of marbles to four. 

 When I would abstract one of them, sometimes 

 he seemed to miss it, or at least to be in doubt, 

 but would soon proceed with his play and not 

 worry himself about it ; yet he rarely failed to 

 show that he was aware that something was 

 wrong. Whether he missed one from four or 



