Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/30

18 Continent, and American monkeys, live in considerable troops, in a kind of general sexual promiscuity, in which the love of the mothers for their young, very strong while they need it in their weakness, does not outlive their growth out of helpless infancy. Similar habits have been noticed among some savage races; and traditions are preserved among many people of a time when family bonds did not exist. But traces of more durable family bonds between monkeys of the same blood seem to exist among the chimpanzees and gorillas, where the appearance of particular and exclusive affection is combined with rivalry with the members of other families. Savage, in the "Boston Journal of Natural History," tells of a female chimpanzee which was observed in a tree with the male and a pair of young of different sexes. She first started to hurry down and run into the thicket with the male and the young female; but, seeing the young male left behind, she went back for him and had taken him in her arms when she was shot. Houzeau, in his "Études" ("Studies on the Mental Faculties of Animals as compared with those of Men"), compares this trait with the indifference with which the New Zealand mother saw Cook take away her son, probably forever, as she was expressly informed. Houzeau also finds traces of paternal affection in the protection that old anthropoid apes accord to the members of the polygamous tribe of which they are chiefs. This kind of affection can, however, hardly be said to exist among all men. There are numerous tribes in which the fathers do not know their own children, in which the names pass in the female line, and where a man's heirs are the children of his sisters. Striking examples of conjugal love are sometimes shown among monogamous monkeys. An incident in point is that of a female of an American species which, tired of holding her young one, called up the male to relieve her. Another story is that of the male in the Jardin des Plantes which became inconsolable and starved itself to death after its companion died.

In the way of language, monkeys manifest their passions, emotions, desires, and fears, by cries and gestures, emphasized by significant accents, which vary with the species. Monkeys and children, together with savages and uneducated people of civilized nations, manifest an inclination to mimic the gestures and motions of all persons whom they see. We think that this trait is especially prominent in monkeys, but thousands of instances might be cited to show that mankind, old and young, shares it with them. The attitude and the sagacity of monkeys are so human that some savages believe that it is out of maliciousness that they do not talk. In fact, a monkey might pass for a dumb man, because he does not articulate the consonants clearly, as we do; but not all men have this power of articulation in an equal degree. We have stammerers by birth and by habit. Some savage tribes have a scanty alphabet complicated by clicks and nasal and guttural sounds that can not be imagined till they are heard. All monkeys have voices,