Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/540

526 often so overcome by its paroxysm that it can neither defend itself nor attack. Another sign of anger is given by shaking violently with the four hands the bars of the cage, the grating, or some support. This habit, born of the forest, is evidently intended to frighten enemies with noise. Molly never failed to exercise it when, after having been teased by any one, he heard him laugh. The cage was fastened to the table, and both were fastened to the wall. As long as the cage was loose, Molly would shake it. As soon as it was fixed, he tried to shake it, and, failing, did not do so again till time and use having worn upon the nails, the cage gained a little play, when he seized his opportunity and the racket was renewed. I then put in a piece of India-rubber to muffle the sound, and the monkey stopped his shaking. He did not care to see the cage move, but to make a noise. This habit is, however, not always a sign of anger. Some monkeys practice it under the influence of ennui or impatience, or when they wish to attract attention, and, in the lack of any other resource, the rhesus would hunt up in his straw a dry bread-crust, a nut-shell, a bone, or anything hard that he could strike against his cage-bars.

To express a desire, my monkey utters a prolonged "Oh!" or sounds the interjection in two syllables, with the second a fifth higher than the first. The tone rises according to the intensity of the desire. Thus, when I was talking with another person of the favorite eatables of the rhesus (such as milk, apples, potatoes, and rice), the monkey, although I was not speaking to him, underlined those well-known words with chuckles of approbation, and pushed his oh's through his lips, which were puckered out as if he were whistling. His attitude was the same when I gave the order from my room to have his meal brought in. The rhesus would at once fix his eyes on the door by which the anticipated feast was to come in; and this, no matter what might be the time of the day or night. The behavior was, then, not influenced by the periodicity of the want, which determines regular actions with many other animals, and was independent of the person who pronounced the words. I might cite thousands of cases observed on my premises, by hundreds of persons, that prove superabundantly that monkeys fully comprehend the relations of certain words and the objects corresponding to them.

The rhesus knew, besides, the names of all the animals that lived in the same room with him but in different cages—some sixty or seventy in number. If I pronounced the name of any of them, without giving any sign of voice or look, he would put his head through the hole in the cage, and turn it significantly toward the animal in question.

This monkey's fear of snakes was extreme, and extended to everything that had any resemblance to them. The same feeling is common to all monkeys. A very fine mandrill of my pets having a habit of prying about, I found no better way of restricting his