I returned the monkey to the Zoological Gardens at the end of February, and up to the time of his death in October 1881, he remembered me as well as the first day that he was sent back. I visited the monkey-house about once a month, and whenever I approached his cage he saw me with astonishing quickness—indeed, generally before I saw him—and ran to the bars, through which he thrust both hands with every expression of joy. He did not, however, scream aloud; his mind seemed too much occupied by the cares of monkey-society to admit of a vacancy large enough for such very intense emotion as he used to experience in the calmer life that he lived before. Being much struck with the extreme rapidity of his discernment whenever I approached the cage, however many other persons might be standing round, I purposely visited the monkey-house on Easter Monday, in order to see whether he would pick me out of the solid mass of people who fill the place on that day. Although I could only obtain a place three or four rows back from the cage, and although I made no sound wherewith to attract his attention, he saw me almost immediately, and with a sudden intelligent look of recognition ran across the cage to greet me. When I went away he followed me, as he always did, to the extreme end of his cage, and stood there watching my departure as long as I remained in sight.
In conclusion, I should say that much the most striking feature in the psychology of this animal, and the one which is least like anything met with in other animals, was the tireless spirit of investigation. The hours and hours of patient industry which this poor monkey has spent in ascertaining all that his monkey-intelligence could of the sundry unfamiliar objects that fell into his hands, might well read a lesson in carefulness to many a hasty observer. And the keen satisfaction which he displayed when he had succeeded in making any little discovery, such as that of the mechanical principle of the screw, repeating the results of his newly earned knowledge over and over again, till one could not but marvel at the intent abstraction of the 'dumb brute'—this was so different from anything to be met with in any other animal, that I confess I should not have believed what I saw unless I had repeatedly seen it with my own eyes. As my sister once observed, while we were watching him conducting some of his researches, in oblivion to his food and all his other surroundings—'when a monkey behaves like this, it is no wonder that man is a scientific animal!' And in my next work I shall hope to show how, from so high a starting-point, the psychology of the monkey has passed into that of the man.
INDEX.
ACCOUCHEUR, fish, [246];
toad, [254]
BABOON, sympathy shown by Arabian, [474];
rage of, [478];
revenge of, [478]
spiders weighting their webs, [221].
On beetles:
co-operation of, [227]-[28]
Buck, E. C., on intelligence of crocodiles, [263];
on collective instinct of wolves, [433];
on combined action of pelicans, [319]
Buckland, F., on pigeon remembering voice of mistress, [266];
crows breaking shells by dropping them on stones, [283];
birds avoiding telegraph wires, [313]
Buckley, on harvesting ants, [103]
Buckton, G. B., on caterpillars, [236]
Buffalo, [335]-[37]
Buffon, on hexagonal form of bees' cells, [171]-[72];
association of ideas in parrot, [269];
sympathy in ditto, [275];
goat sucker removing eggs, [289]
Bufo obstetricans, [254]
Bull, intelligence of, [338]
Burmeister, on powers of communication in ants, [49]
Byron, Lord, lines on alleged tendency to scorpion to commit suicide, [222]
CADDIS-WORMS, [240]
DACE, tamed, [246]