358 



LIFE, IN ITS HIGHER FORMS. 



being, would have been called the threatening of suicide. 

 Was it anything else in this Ape? Was not the act 

 evidently the result of a process of reasoning, founded on 

 his observation of the value his master set on him, and 

 comprehending the sorrow which the supposed loss would 

 produce? The cautiousness which determined that it 

 should be only a deceptive loss was a refinement of intellect, 

 almost human; it reminds us of that inimitable line of 

 Burns' s — 



" SpaJc o' loupin' owre a linn." 



A kindred animal — the Siamang — shall afford us an 

 example of a mental principle very like conscience. The 

 Dog and Cat, however, often display its workings as well. 

 In Mr Bennet's " Wanderings," there is an account of this 

 Ape, which he was keeping. In the cabin, there was a 

 piece of soap, which had excited the Siamang' s cupidity, 

 and for the abstraction of which he had been several times 

 scolded. One day Mr Bennet, while engaged in writing, 

 happened to see the Siamang engaged in his thievish 

 practices. " I watched him," says the observer, " without 

 his perceiving that I did so; he occasionally cast a furtive 

 glance towards the place where I sat. I pretended to 

 write ; he, seeing me busily engaged, took up the soap and 

 moved away with it in his paw. When he had walked 

 half the length of the cabin, I spoke quietly, without 

 frightening him. The instant he found I saw him, he 

 walked back again, and deposited the soap nearly in the 

 same place whence he had taken it ; thus betraying, both 

 by his first and last actions, a consciousness of having done 

 wrong. 



We shall close these anecdotes with a very touching one 



