“In a day or two the mystery was explained. An officer of Hanoverian Grenadiers had taken a solitary walk on that very afternoon, and found a party of young monkeys pelting the fishermen from behind the rocks. The officer was a good deal of a naturalist, and so he concealed himself carefully and watched the performance.
“While the youngsters were pelting the fishermen, several old monkeys arrived and drove the mischievous youths away. Then they sat down and watched very attentively the business of fish-taking, and when the officers beached their boat and went away, the monkeys determined to improve their lesson. They launched the boat, baited the hooks, and went to fishing. They caught a few fish, and then came back to shore, left the boat and retired up the rock before the officers came in sight again.”
“Did they carry off the fish they had caught?” George asked.
“Yes,” was the reply, “not only what they caught themselves but those that the officers had left in the boat.”
“What a human action!” exclaimed Harry.
“The men who argue that we are descended from monkeys ought to know of the performance of the Gibralter apes.”
“Not only in actions but in structure,” said Mr. Graham, “does the monkey bear a resemblance to man. Several naturalists have regarded the monkey as only an inferior form of the human race and have so classified him. The celebrated naturalist Linnæus placed man with monkeys in his order of Primates or first animals. He made his genus Homo consist of human beings (Homo sapiens), of chimpanzees (Homo Troglodytes), of orang outangs (Homo satyrus), and the Gibbons Homo lar.”