492 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
savagely, but seeing my mother he immediately jumped into 
her lap. While another chain was being prepared he got to the 
trunk where his nuts are kept. I have long noticed that he 
looks upon tha.t trunk as in some special sense his own pro- 
perty. There are other things kept in the trunk as well as the 
nuts, and if any person goes to the trunk for anything he be- 
comes furiously angry. Indeed nothing makes him so angry as 
people opening the trunk, and this is not because he wants nuts 
out of it, for he always has more than he can eat beside him, 
and generally refuses to take any that are offered to him. 
Well, to-day, as soon as the breaking of his chain enabled him 
to get to the trunk, he began picking at the lock with his 
fingers. I then gave him the key, and he tried for two full 
hours without ceasing to unlock the trunk with this key. It 
was a very difficult lock to open, being slightly out of order, 
and requires the lid of the trunk to be pressed down before it 
would work, so I believe it was absolutely impossible for him 
to open it, but he found in time the right way to put the key 
in, and to turn it backwards and forwards, and after every at- 
tempt he pulled the lid upwards to see if it were unlocked. That 
this was the result of observing people is obvious, from the fact 
that after every time he put the key into the lock and failed to 
open the trunk, he passed the key round and round the outside 
of the lock several times. The explanation of this is that, my 
mother’s sight being bad, she often misses the lock when put- 
ting in the key, and then feels round and round the lock 
with the key ; the monkey therefore evidently seems to think 
that this feeling round and round the lock with the key is in 
some way necessary to the success of unlocking the lock, so 
that, although he could see perfectly well how to put the key in 
straight himself, he went through this useless operation first. 
21st. To-day I gave him a wooden box with the lid nailed 
on, and an iron spoon, to see if he would use the latter as a 
lever wherewith to raise the lid. The experiment was some- 
what spoiled by my mother putting the handle of the spoon 
into the crack between the lid and the box to show him how to do 
it. Therefore I cannot tell whether or not he would have taken 
this first step himself, if he had had time to do so. However, 
when the handle of the spoon was in he certainly used it in the 
proper manner, pulling it down with all his strength at the 
extreme end, thus drawing the nails out of the box and raising 
the lid. 
22nd. He was sitting on my mother’s knee, and she wash- 
ing his hands with a little sponge, a process of which he is 
