MONKEYS - EMOTIONS. 47 7 
they beat or drum with pieces of stick on sonorous pieces 
of wood . 1 
Curiosity is more strongly pronounced in monkeys 
than in any other animals. We all know the interesting 
illustration on this head furnished by the experiment of 
Mr. Darwin, who, in order to test the statement of Brehm 
that monkeys have an instinctive dread of snakes, and yet 
cannot 6 desist from occasionally satiating their curiosity in 
a most human fashion, by lifting up the lid of the box in 
which the snakes were kept , 5 took a stuffed snake to the 
monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. Mr. Darwin 
says : — 
The excitement thus caused was one of the most curious 
spectacles I ever beheld. ... I then placed a live snake in 
a paper bag, with the mouth loosely closed, in one of the larger 
compartments. One of the monkeys immediately approached, 
cautiously opened the bag, peeped in, and instantly dashed 
away. Then I witnessed what Brehm has described, for 
monkey after monkey, with head raised high and turned on 
one side, could not resist taking a momentary peep into the 
upright bag, at the dreadful object lying quietly at the 
«ottom . 2 
Allied, perhaps, to curiosity, and so connected with 
the emotions, is what Mr. Darwin calls ‘ the principle of 
imitation . 5 It is proverbial that monkeys carry this 
principle to ludicrous lengths, and they are the only 
animals which imitate for the mere sake of imitating, as 
has been observed by Desor, though an exception ought 
to be made in favour of talking birds. The psychology 
of imitation is difficult of analysis, but it is remarkable 
as well as suggestive that it should be confined in its 
manifestations to monkeys and certain birds among ani- 
mals, and to the lower mental levels among men. As 
Mr. Darwin says : — 
The principle of imitation is strong in man, and especially, 
as I have myself observed, with savages. In certain morbid 
states of the brain, this tendency is exaggerated to an extra- 
ordinary degree ; some hemiplegic patients and others, at the 
1 Boston Journal of Nat. Hist., iv. p. 324. 
2 Descent of Man, p. 72. 
