hat of their dumb fellow-creatures is so
pronounced that it amounts to a difference of kind as well as of degree.
_Borne_, literally limited, but used in French as a synonyme of
short-witted, is the term that best characterizes the actions of all
other animals, as compared with the graceless but amazingly versatile
and well-planned pranks of our nearest relatives. The standard of
_usefulness_ would, indeed, degrade the perpetrators of these pranks
below the rank of the dullest donkey; but as a criterion of intelligence
the application of that test should rather be reversed.

Watch a colony of house-building insects, their faithful co-operation,
their steady, exact adaptation of right means to a fixed purpose, and
compare their activity with that of a troop of ball-playing boys. Does
not the gratuitous ingenuity of the young bipeds indicate a far higher
degree of intelligence? Does it argue against the quality of that
intelligence that any novel phenomenon--a funnel-shaped cloud, the
appearance of a swarm of bats or unknown birds--would divert the
ball-players from their immediate purpose? Monkeys alone share this gift
of gratuitous curiosity. A strange object, a piece of red cloth
fluttering in the grass, may excite the interest of a watch-dog or of an
antelope. They may approach to investigate, but for subjective purposes.
They fear the presence of an enemy. A monkey's inquisitiveness can
dispense with such motives. In my collection of four-handed pets I have
a young Rhesus monkey (_Macacus Rhesus_), by no means the most
intelligent member of the community, but gifted with an amount of
meddlesome pluck which often makes it necessary to circumscribe the
freedom of his movements. One day last spring, when he joined an
assembly of his fellow-boarders on a sunny porch, the shortness of his
tether did not prevent him from picking a quarrel with a big raccoon.
After a few sham manoauvres the old North American suddenly lost his
temper and charged his tormentor with an energy of action that led to an
unexpected result,--for in springing back the Rhesus snapped his wire
chain, and in the next moment went flying down the lane toward the open
woods. But just before he reached the gate he suddenly stopped. On a
post of the picket-fence the neighbors' boys had deposited a kite, and
the Rhesus paused. The phenomenon of the dangling kite-tail, with its
polychromatic ribbons, eclipsed the memory of his wrongs and his
mutinous project