THE MONKEYFOI.K OF SOUTH AFRICA loi 



ways you convey your thoughts or emotions, just the same 

 as we do. 



THE BABOON'S SPAN OF LIFE 



We baboonfolk take eight to ten years to grow up. 

 After that, for another five to ten years we fill out and get 

 very muscular, and our eye teeth grow long and sharp. 

 Sometimes they are over two inches in length. There is 

 a groove down the front of them like that in the poison 

 fangs of a cobra. This groove enables the teeth to be 

 forced into and withdrawn from the wounds easier than 

 if it were not present. Besides, it serves to carry saliva from 

 our mouths into the wounds, which makes them fester and 

 get dreadfully inflamed, and as likely as not mortification 

 sets in. You see, we never bite any living folk unless we 

 are really angry. It is nearly always in self-defence that 

 we use our big teeth. They are our chief weapons, and with 

 them we fight for our lives against our enemies. 



The saliva of our mouths isn't always poisonous. It is 

 only so when we are dreadfully angry. The more angry 

 we get, the more poisonous does our saliva become. It is 

 just the same with you humanfolk, and all other creatures. 

 When anger arises, a mysterious change occurs in this 

 secretion of the mouth, and the greater the anger, the more 

 poisonous becomes this secretion. 



Your wise men, I believe, have found this out for them- 

 selves. Why, I am told they have even scraped the per- 

 spiration off a humanfolk person's skin just after he has been 

 in a great rage. Then they dried it and put it on dogs' 

 tongues. It killed them as quickly as if strychnine had been 

 given them instead. So just remember that when you get 

 angry you grow poisonous, and even your thoughts are 

 poisonous. Anyway, humanfolk say all kinds of venomous 

 things when they are angry, so I suppose that the poison 

 which secretes in the brain-cells is given off in that way. 



