THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 35 



a mood of anxious, earnest entreaty, which to 

 me seemed to contain no sound of anger, warn- 

 ing, or alarm, but which, on the contrary, I had 

 interpreted as a kind of love-speech, full of 

 music and tenderness. I had not learned the 

 exact meaning of any one of the sounds con- 

 tained in this cylinder, but had ascribed in a 

 collective and general way such a meaning to 

 this speech. But from Puck's conduct I was led 

 to believe that it was a general complaint of 

 some kind against those monkeys in that other 

 cage who had made life a burden to little Pedro. 

 One thing was clear to my mind, and that is that 

 Puck interpreted the actions of the monkey which 

 he saw in the glass to mean one thing, and the 

 sounds which he heard from the horn to mean 

 quite another. 



I do not think that their language is capable 

 of shading sentences into narrative or giving any 

 detail in a complaint, for I have never seen any- 

 thing yet among them that would justify one 

 in ascribing to them so high a type of speech ; 

 but in terms of general grievance it may have 

 conveyed to Puck the idea of a monkey in dis- 

 tress, and hence his desire to avoid it ; while the 

 image in the glass presented to him a picture of 



