BOTANIC GARDENS MENAGERIE. 143 



I have occasionally seen old monkeys which appeared to 

 be insane, incessantly gibbering at nothing and behaving in 

 a quite meaningless way. It might be said that it would be 

 difficult to tell whether a monkey was mad or not, as their 

 ordinary ways of going on are so wild, but as a matter of fact, 

 any one who observes a sane monkey closely can see why it 

 behaves as it does, and what it means by so doing. Often 

 monkeys, Beroks especially, invent comic tricks to amuse on- 

 lookers, thus one used to pass its hindleg over its neck, and 

 beat it on the ground and pretend it could not get it back, but 

 these tricks are evidently games invented for fun. Out-breaks of 

 maniacal ferocity occur also in ordinarily quiet monkeys, and 

 these are commonest at night and apparently in the very early 

 hours of the morning, about 4 or 5 a.m. A male monkey 

 ordinarily quiet thus attacked a female whom he was very fond 

 of and inflicted severe injuries on her, destroying the sight of 

 one eye, from which injuries she never recovered properly, but 

 wasted away, and after producing a still born young one died. 



The monkey which attacked her seemed very sad when he 

 was found next morning, and sat by her all day trying to con- 

 sole her. This is not the only case of this nocturnal ferocity. I 

 have seen among these monkeys, and cases of ferocious mur- 

 der in human beings at about this period of the night are too 

 common as is well known. Monkeys of course often quarrel 

 for more or less valid reasons both in a wild state and in the 

 cage, and bite each other spitefully. When one would bite 

 the others it was found quite sufficient to nip off the tips of 

 the canine teeth with a pair of strong wire snippers. It does 

 not hurt the animal at all if properly done and the teeth do 

 not decay, and when he finds he cannot bite through the skin 

 of another monkey he gives it up. Old monkeys often have 

 the teeth decayed, and worn away, but they never seem to 

 suffer any pain from decayed teeth, and I have never seen any 

 inflammation of the jaw caused by them. 



The Kra is a very loquacious animal and has an exten- 

 sive vocabulary in which respects it is very different from the 

 anthropoid apes, who seldom speak at all. Some of the noises 

 of the K'ra have quite obvious meanings, thus the word 



R. A. Soc, No. 46, 1906. 



