e
learned that I could find the lost marbles, he would appeal to me as
soon as he missed them, and in several instances he would take his
little black fingers and open my lips to see if I had concealed them in
my mouth, the place where all monkeys conceal what they wish to keep in
safety from other monkeys, who never venture to put their fingers into
one another's mouth, and when any article is once lodged in a monkey's
mouth it is safe from the reach of all the tribe. I repeated this until
I felt quite sure of the ability of my subject to count three, and I
then increased the number of marbles to four. When I would abstract one
of them, sometimes he seemed to miss it, or at least to be in doubt, but
would soon proceed with his play and not worry himself about it; yet he
rarely failed to show that he was aware that something was wrong.
Whether he missed one from four, or only acted on general principles, I
do not know; but that he missed one from three was quite evident.

I may here add that there is a great difference in different specimens,
and their tastes vary like those of human beings. The same idea is much
clearer to some monkeys than it is to others, and a choice of colours
much more definite; but I think that all of them assign to different
numbers a difference of value. Some are talkative and others taciturn. I
think I may state with safety that the Cebus is the most intelligent and
talkative of all the monkeys I have known; that the Old World monkeys,
as a group, are more taciturn and less intelligent than the New World
monkeys, but I do not mean to include the anthropoid apes in this
remark.

[Sidenote: MUSICAL RECORDS ON PHONOGRAPH]

As a test of their taste for music or musical sounds, I took three
little bells, which I suspended by three strings, one end of which was
tied to a button. The bells were all alike, except that from two of them
I had removed the clappers. I dropped the bells through the meshes of
the cage about a foot apart, and allowed the monkey to play with them. I
soon discovered that he was attracted by the one which contained the
clapper. He played with it, and soon became quite absorbed in it. I
attracted his attention to another part of the cage with some food, and
while he was thus diverted I changed the position of the bells by
withdrawing and dropping them through other meshes. On his return he
would go to the place he had left, and, of course, get a bell with no
clapper in it. He