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1878.] . The Serpent and the Ape. 227 
This was continued for some hours without the slightest change 
in the disposition of the monkeys—all of their actions showing a 
most intolerable fear of the snake, mingled with an attraction or 
curiosity which would not allow them to remain away from it. 
This was so universal that not one of the monkeys in the cage 
was entirely free from it. 
The snake was finally taken out, and several other animals be- 
longing to the same class were put in its place, but with very dif- 
ferent results. Of a tortoise, for instance, and a small dead alliga- 
tor, they were at first rather shy, but they at length began to 
touch them, and in ten minutes they were playing with them, 
and passing them from one to another with the greatest curiosity. 
The same snake was then shown, in turn, to animals belonging 
to a number of other orders: Carnivores, Rodents, Ungulates, 
Edentates and Marsupials, but none of them paid it any special 
attention with the exception of a Peccary (Dicotyles labiatus), 
which, finding it to be dead, seemed disposed to make a meal of it. 
Turning from the monkeys and watching, instead, the visitors 
to the Reptile House, it is evident that the instinctive fear and 
horror of the snake which is so common as to be almost universal 
with man, is closely allied to that which has been seen to exist 
among monkeys. Women readily develop this, as their emo- 
tions are more quickly responded to by gestures, than is usually 
the case in the other sex, and I was specially fortunate, a short 
_ time after the occurrence detailed above, in having an opportunity 
of observing the effect produced by the collection of snakes, upon 
a lady who was deaf and dumb—by the fact of her disabilities she 
was shut out, to a very great extent, from the influence—repress- 
ing, so far as the expression of the emotions is concerned—of free _ 
= association with others, and the nature of her feelings was there- . 
by rendered more evident. I was not at all surprised to trace in 
her, actions and gestures which resembled closely those which I 
-= had observed on the part of the monkeys; they evidenced the 
same fear, the same attraction and the same repulsion, and after 
watching for a long time, with an expression of the most intense 
disgust, the cage of Boas, she was at last led away by her oe 
_ protesting that she wanted to stay. 
Now if it be asked why this instinctive feeling should be de- 
veloped in the Primates alone—it is probable that as the early 
dawnings of intelligence in the common ancestor of man and 
