iS^g.j An Honest CashieV. 345 
life-saving and signal service, I think that there is an oppor- 
tunity for some of our well-disposed millionares like Peabody, 
Lick, Cornell, and others of their kind, to establish one of 
these stations in the ocean. I doubt if their money could 
be put to any better purpose than in helping carry out some 
such plan for the benefit of Science, and for the additional 
safety of those who go down to the sea in ships .” — Kansas 
City Review of Science and Industry . 
IV. AN HONEST CASHIER. 
f T is one of the curious things in nature that the animals 
nearest to man in the order of development are of little 
~ or no use to him industrially. There has never been a 
time when strong racesofmen have not compelled their weaker 
brothers to work for them. But, barring the showman and the 
organ grinder, the meanest of men have not been able to sub- 
jugate or enslave their simian relatives. An ancient Arabic 
proverb accounts for the freedom of apes by the fadtthat they 
shrewdly refuse to talk : “ well they know that were they to 
speak they would be made to work ; so they wisely hold their 
tongues.” 
The proverbial prudence of the monkey appears to fail in 
a measure, however, in the land of the white elephant. An 
Austrian resident at the Court of Siam reports that in that 
country the monkey is trained to fish for crabs with his tail, 
as comical a pursuit as can well be imagined, except, per- 
haps, for the worthy and intelligent ape engaged in it, who 
sometimes gets a “ bite ” from a monster crab that he is 
totally unable to land, and falls a victim to the superior 
weight of his Cancer Ferox, who drags him into the water, 
drowns, and finally devours him. The Siamese ape is also 
stated to be in great request among native merchants as a 
cashier in their counting-houses. Vast quantities of base 
coin obtain circulation in Siam, and the faculty of discri- 
mination between good money and bad would appear to be 
possessed by these gifted monkeys in such an extraordinary 
degree of development that no mere human being, however 
carefully trained, can compete with them. The cashier ape 
meditatively puts into his mouth each coin presented to him 
