CHAPTER XL 



The Word for Food in the Rhesus Dialect. — The Rhesus 

 Sound of Alarm.— The Dialect of the White -Face. — Dolly 

 Varden, Uncle Remus and others. 



From a number of sounds uttered by the 

 Rhesus monkeys, I finally selected the word 

 which, for many reasons, I believed meant food, 

 and was the equivalent in meaning to that word 

 in the Capuchin tongue. The phonetic character 

 of the words differs very widely. The sound ut- 

 tered by the Rhesus, as nearly as I can represent 

 it by letters, is "nqu-u-w." The "u" sound is 

 about the same as in the Capuchin word, but on 

 close examination with the phonograph, it ap- 

 pears to be uttered in five syllables very slightly 

 separated, while the ear only detects two. 



One of the most unique of my experiments I 

 made in Central Park in the autumn of 189 1. I 

 secured a very fine phonograph record of the 

 food-sound of the Rhesus monkeys belonging to 

 the park. During the following night there ar- 

 rived at the park a shipment of Rhesus monkeys 



9 1 



