s: he snatched the tail, and with the gravity of a
coroner proceeded to examine the dismembered appendage. If he had
mistaken the apparatus for a trap, the result of the dissection must
have reassured him; but he continued the inquest till one of his
pursuers headed him off and drove him back to his favorite hiding-place
under the porch, which he reached in safety, though in the interest of
science he had encumbered himself with a large section of kite-paper.

On my last visit to New York I bought a female Chacma baboon that had
attracted my attention by the grotesque demonstrativeness of her
motions, and took her on board of a Norfolk steamer, where she at once
became an object of general enthusiasm. The next morning Sally was
taking her breakfast on deck, when she suddenly dropped her apple-pie
and jumped upon the railing. Through the foam of the churned brine her
keen eye had espied a shoal of porpoises, and, clinging to the railing
with her hind hands, she continued to gesticulate and chatter as long as
our gambolling fellow-travellers remained in sight.

Menagerie monkeys, too, are sure to interrupt their occupations at the
sight of a new-comer,--a clear indication that monkeys, like men,
possess a surplus of intelligence above the exigencies of their
individual needs. Yet these exigencies are by no means inconsiderable.
Unlike the grazing deer and the deer-eating panther, the frugivorous
monkeys of the tropics are the direct competitors of the intolerant lord
of creation. The Chinese macaques, the Moor monkey, the West-African
baboons, have to eke out a living by pillage. The Gibraltar monkey has
hardly any other resources. Nor has nature been very generous in the
physical equipment of the species. Most monkeys lack the sharp teeth
that enable the tiger to defy the avenger of his misdeeds. Without
exception they all lack the keen scent that helps the deer to elude its
pursuers. But their mental faculties more than compensate for such
bodily deficiencies. In the Abyssinian highlands the mornings are often
cold enough to cover the grass with hoar-frost, yet the frost-dreading
baboons choose that very time to raid the corn-fields of the natives.
They omit no precaution, and it is almost impossible to circumvent the
vigilance of their sentries. Prudence, derived from
_providence_,--i.e., prevision, the gift of fore-seeing things,--is in
many respects almost a synonyme of reason. Physically that gift is
typified in th