Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/604

580 looking for me, his bright yellow eye pressed eagerly against the wires, in the corner nearest the side I came to. The instant he saw me he uttered a mocking grunt, which plainly said, "Thought you'd surprise me, eh?" and began a violent weaving and coaxing to get out. Perhaps he was thus wide awake because he seemed really to fear being alone, and to dread the dark. The moment he was left in the room the spirit of mischief departed, and he retreated to the top of his cage, where he remained till some one came in. The dusk, with its shadows, always alarmed him, and, when taken into a strange room, he cowered and clung to his friend as if frightened out of his wits. Fond as was the lemur of society, he was exceedingly nervous about it. When he heard a person coming through the hall, he first ran to the end of a sofa nearest the door; as the steps approached, he grew more and more uneasy; and, when the hand touched the door-knob, he yielded to wild panic,* bounded to the other end of the sofa and over the back, where he held by one hand, while his body dangled behind. His great sensitiveness showed also in another way—he never met a human eye with his own. He saw every expression of the face, but he always looked just beyond it. He violently objected to being stared at, turned his head away, and, if his head were held between two hands for the purpose of looking in his face, he got away, either by a sudden spring to the top of the head of his captor or by wriggling himself out backward. His wool-covered body was the most elusive in the world to hold.

But, although the little fellow would not look one squarely in the face, he saw everything that happened, and was as inquisitive as any monkey. He liked to sit before the window and look at passers-by, both beast and human; a cat aroused him to the point of expressing his mind, and he saluted her by a short, sharp bark. A bugle that was brought out with the hope of curing him of too great familiarity with the person of the owner, proved, on the contrary, to be a special lure. He rose on his hind-legs—which he did with perfect ease—and thrust his nose into the large end, evidently to find the sound. Once happening to get possession of the instrument when its guardian was absent, the lemur made a thorough examination of it. He pulled it on to the floor, threw his body across it, embracing it with his legs to keep it in place, and then proceeded to push his head almost out of sight into the big end, take the small end in his mouth, as if to blow, and to make minute and careful study of every part of it, until fully satisfied that whatever he sought was beyond his reach, when he abandoned it.

The intelligence of the creature was notable. He knew his own blankets instantly wherever he saw them, and was quite positive that no one had a right to touch them; he learned his name