, but as soon as they turned away, which they
often did on purpose to try him, he promptly recommenced his work of
destruction. Their giggling, however, excited his suspicions, and,
seeing them peep around the corner, he suddenly became a model of
virtuous inactivity. One of the picnickers then entered the garden-house
by a rear door, to watch the little hypocrite through a crack in the
board wall, while his companions ostensibly walked away and out of
sight. As soon as everything was quiet. Master Rhesus went to work
again, but at the same time kept his eye on the corner till he was
interrupted by a tap on the wall and a mysterious voice from within,
"Stop that, Tommy!" Tommy started, peeped around the corner, and looked
puzzled. He was sure there was nobody in sight. How could an invisible
spy have witnessed his transgression? He then scrutinized the wall more
closely, discovered the crack, and dropped the rope with a curious grin,
as he squinted through the tell-tale aperture. He had traced the effect
to its cause.

Unlike dogs, raccoons, or squirrels, chained monkeys rarely entangle
themselves: they at once notice the shortening of their tether, and
never rest till they have discovered the clue of the phenomenon. A dog
in the same predicament has to content himself with tugging at his chain
or gnawing his rope; and the reason is that the wisdom of the wisest dog
is limited to business qualifications. He is a hunter, and nature has
endowed him with the requisite faculties, just as she has endowed the
constructive spider and the bee. Bees and dogs share the faculty of
direction, enabling them to find their way home, a talent implying a
very miracle of infallible and yet unconscious intuition, and in the
strictest sense a one-sided business qualification. The goose, the
sturgeon, and the almost brainless tortoise possess the same gift in a
transcendent degree; the oriole builds her first nest as skilfully as
the last; the young bee constructs her hexagons with an ease and a
uniform success that leave no possible doubt that the exercise of her
talent is generically different from a function of reason. Instincts may
be far-reaching enough to defy the rivalry of human science, but they
resemble loophole-guns, that can be fired only in a single direction.
The intuition that guides the turkey-hen to her nest does not enable her
to find her way out of a half-open log trap. The instinct by which a dog
retraces his trail acros