Chapter VIII: Part 8

MR. GARNER’S claim to have gained a clue to a form of language understood by monkeys for a short time excited more interest than any subject of natural history in recent years. It was based on such ingenious experiments, including the practical use of such an invention as the phonograph, and was based on methods so pleasing to the scientific mind, that there seemed more than a probability that he was on the verge of a great discovery. On the other hand, men like the keepers of the monkeys in the Zoological Gardens, who have a special and practical knowledge of the subject, refused for a moment to entertain the idea, either that there was a universal “Simian tongue,” or even one which was common to more than the members of a single class. In his book on the “Speech of Monkeys,”[12] he gives in a complete form the result of the ingenious inquiries, the first instalment of which roused such curiosity when published in the _New Review_. Every one who read the story of the clever experiments made by the aid of the phonograph, which caught, and reproduced when required, the characteristic tones of monkey chatter, will be anxious to learn whether the increase in the numbers and variety of the experiments recorded strengthened or weakened the conclusions which Mr. Garner first formed. With one important modification, he is still confident that he has obtained evidence, not only of the existence of a form of speech current between monkeys, but of the meaning and modifications of some of the sounds in use. The exception is one which would occur to most minds on reading the evidence, if not from natural probability. He no longer claims for monkeys any one speech common to all races, a universal “Simian tongue,” which if it existed would argue a greater uniformity among the diversities of monkey structure than exists among the uniformity of human physique. The experiments on which Mr. Garner based his conclusion, that there is a common “Simian tongue,” was no doubt difficult to explain on any other supposition, for having obtained on his phonograph a record of the sounds made by two chimpanzees, he found that a note which he translated to mean “milk,” but which he subsequently took to stand for “food” in general, was used by the Capuchin monkey in apparently the same sense. He now believes that the sounds are only understood by members of the same species. This admission agrees with the views of the keepers, who maintain that the cries and exclamations of different species of monkey, when expressing the ordinary emotions of fear or pleasure, offer no sort of resemblance, and scout the notion of a common “Simian tongue.”

Footnote 12:

_The Speech of Monkeys_, by R. Garner. London: Heinemann.

ARABIAN BABOON. From a photograph by Gambier Bolton.
]

The fact of the interpretation of the chimpanzee’s note by the Capuchin, can perhaps be explained without throwing doubt upon the whole theory. Monkeys in captivity do learn occasionally the notes of another species, not as mere mimics, but with the meaning which the other naturally attaches to the sounds.

“The most remarkable case,” writes Mr. Garner, “which has come under my notice, is one in which a young white-faced monkey has acquired the sound which means ‘food’ in the Capuchin tongue. This event occurred under my own eyes, attended by such conditions as showed that the monkey had a motive for learning the sound. In the room in which the monkeys were kept by a dealer in Washington, there was a cage which contained a young white-faced cebus, of more than average intelligence. He was a quiet, sedate, and thoughtful little monkey, whose grey hair and beard gave him quite a venerable aspect, and for this reason I called him ‘Darwin.’ From some cause unknown to me, he was afraid of me, and I showed him but little attention. On the same shelf, and in an adjacent cage, lived the little Capuchin ‘Puck.’ For some weeks I visited ‘Puck’ almost daily, and in _response to his sound for food_, I always supplied him with nuts or bananas. I never gave him any of these things to eat unless he would ask for them in his own speech. On one of my visits, my attention was attracted by little ‘Darwin,’ who was uttering a strange sound, which I had never before heard one of his species use. I did not recognize the sound at first, but very soon discovered that it was intended to imitate the sound of the Capuchin, in response to which I always gave ‘Puck’ a nice morsel of food. After this I always gave him some in acknowledgment of his efforts, and I observed from day to day that he improved in making this sound, until at last it could scarcely be distinguished from that made by the Capuchin.”

This may explain the mistake as to the “Simian tongue.” Professor Garner also wishes to get rid of the notion that monkeys can carry on a connected conversation. “Their speech is usually limited to a single sound or remark, which is replied to in the same manner.” What Mr. Garner now claims for monkeys’ speech is, that it is voluntary, deliberate, and articulate; that the sounds are always addressed to some certain individual with the evident purpose of having them understood, and that they wait for, and expect an answer, and if they do not receive one, frequently repeat the sounds, which they do not utter when alone. He further finds that they understand the sounds made by other monkeys of their own kind, and usually respond to them with a like sound, and that the _sound is interpreted to mean the same thing_, and obeyed in the same manner by different monkeys of the same species. The words which we have placed in italics are, of course, the most important part of the conclusion. But much, if not the whole value which they bear, must depend not only on the certainty that “their sounds convey a fixed idea on a given subject from one mind to another,” but also on the assurance that these sounds are sufficiently numerous and definite in meaning not to come under the same head as mere exclamations of alarm, or pleasure, which form part of the usual utterance of so many animals. A cat, for instance, shows pleasure by sound,—that is, by purring; displeasure or fear by sound,—that is, by growling and spitting; and desire by sound,—that is, by mewing; and if all that Professor Garner had to show was that monkeys had something equivalent, or rather more than equivalent, to a cat’s purring, growling, or mewing, there would be nothing very remarkable in the fact, though the extreme ingenuity and patient attention which he has exhibited in making his experiments must always lend these a subordinate and secondary interest of their own. But he rightly excludes mere sounds of emotion from the faculty of “speech,” such as he claims for monkeys. “Speech,” he says, “is that form of materialized thought which is confined to oral sounds, when they are designed to convey a definite idea from mind to mind;” and “sounds which only express emotion are not speech.” It is, therefore, not sufficient for Professor Garner to show that the sounds which he has so carefully observed and noted are understood by his monkeys, he has also to show that they are distinct from mere expressions of emotion. The fuller experiments, from which he now writes, do not tend to clear away this difficulty.

The Capuchins, which are alike the most voluble and the cleverest of the smaller monkeys, have a sound which Professor Garner first translated as “food,” but to which he subsequently found he must attach a wider meaning. He now thinks that when modulated in one way the sound means a certain kind of food, and when modulated in another, it means “give,” or “give me that.” By repeating it to a Capuchin, he often induced it to hand over a part of its food, or some plaything. But it would be possible to infer from this that the sound was a mere expression of desire, and not really different from the mewing of a cat when it wants its kittens returned, or a door opened. The word for “drink” he still considers to be distinct from that expressing “food,” and fixed alike in form and meaning. The sound which he took to mean “weather,” because uttered by a sick monkey when a storm burst, has now resolved itself into a general expression of discontent. The alarm sound is dual, one form, “e-c-g-k,” expressing fear, another, “c-h-i,” merely calling attention. But some animals, such as the elephant, have more than one “warning sound,” and warning sounds in themselves do not constitute “speech”; nor does the fact that the Professor has been able to reproduce and get replies to the “food sound” of the rhesus and cebus monkeys prove more than that he has been a clever and careful observer of a particular exclamation. He thinks, however, that there is a sound meaning “monkey,” because this is uttered when one meets another, or is shown its image in a mirror after solitary confinement; and he finds that the shake of the head, by which monkeys, like men, signify “no,” is also accompanied by a clucking sound, which he takes for a negation. But even if the results of his later experiments are less fruitful than might have been anticipated, Professor Garner has still good reasons for hope. The phonograph, which alone made it possible to conduct his inquiry with scientific accuracy, promises to give aid in a new and unexpected quarter. The same invention which has rendered possible a permanent record of sound, and its reproduction at will, also facilitates its analysis or synthesis. One of the main difficulties for the human ear in dealing with monkey speech, is its extreme rapidity, and the possibility of modulations existing which are to us inaudible, but are perfectly distinct to the acute Simian perception. By recording the monkey notes on the drum, and then spinning the machine at a slow rate, the sounds are analyzed, and modulations detected, and in a way hitherto impossible. Much is hoped from such analysis of the main “words” of monkey speech, which seem now to have different meanings, though the vocal difference is indistinguishable. Professor Garner pins his faith to the obvious fact that monkeys, like men, have tongues, teeth, lips, and all the organs of speech; that they use the organs, and that there is at least a probability that a distinction is attached by them to many sounds in which no difference is detected by our ears. He deserves every success in his new experiments, though the effect of the latest has been to diminish rather than to increase the range of the monkey vocabulary.

The later experiments with the larger anthropoid apes, from whose deliberate utterances better results might be expected than from the volatile chatter of the small monkeys, do not seem to have given much additional information. Mr. Garner’s expedition to Western Africa, in the hope of inducing wild monkeys to answer the sounds which he had succeeded in learning from the tame ones, ended as such an enterprise might have been expected to end—in failure. Perhaps the whole inquiry may lead to the conclusion that we know no more now of monkey speech than we did before. But in any case it was a hopeful and ingenious experiment, and without boldness and enterprise fresh knowledge comes slowly.

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RARE AND BEAUTIFUL MONKEYS.

AMONG the hundred inmates of the Monkey Palace at the Zoo, more than half the species shown may claim a place among the more elegant animal forms; and an acquaintance with the smaller and squirrel-like members of the tribe which abound in the forests of Central and Southern America, and which, in spite of their delicate constitutions, are generally represented in greater or less numbers in the Society’s collection, shows that in at least three elements of beauty, the delicate modelling of the hands, the brightness and vivacity of the eye, and in the colour of the fur, they hold their own with the prettiest and most attractive of the four-footed animals of the four continents. The repulsion with which all monkeys are now commonly regarded, is a curious instance of the change of association with animal types. It is mainly modern sentiment that has identified the monkey with the idea of repulsive ugliness, and if the great anthropoid apes, with their disgusting “affinities,” had never been discovered, the monkey tribe might have retained the place which they held in the imagination of old Cosimo Tura, “the rugged and angular but illustrious painter” of the fifteenth century, who filled the backgrounds of his stately pictures of pageants and processions, and his illuminations in the choir-books of Ferrara, with groups of the fantastic and decorative monkeys which he had seen kept as pets in the precincts of the ducal palace.

MACAQUE MONKEYS. From a photograph by
Gambier Bolton.
]

Like the lemurs and lories, with which they are not remotely related, the most elegant little monkeys are natives of the great tropical forest; but the rarest and most interesting of the tribe are so delicate that their brief lives are passed almost unnoticed at the Zoo, where most of them, as they arrive from time to time in the Gardens, are kept secluded in an inner chamber. Those from the woods of Guiana and Brazil are at once the most beautiful in form and the richest in colouring. Like all the monkeys of the New World, they have round heads and broad noses, of the order known as the “cogitative nose” in the classification by which an ingenious physiognomist recently determined the place of that organ as an index to character. There is, however, little else in the countenances of these vivacious little creatures which suggests a reflective mind; though the separation of the nostrils by a wide breadth of cartilage is the character-mark which distinguishes the monkeys of the New World from those of the Old, and rescues the face of each and all of them from the cast of vicious inanity which disfigures so many of the latter. Whatever human features they possess are neither exaggerated nor degraded; and the intelligence which this resemblance lends to their expression is fully borne out by their behaviour as observed by Humboldt and others, who have recorded their character in confinement. It is on record from more than one reliable source, that these South American monkeys, we believe alone among animals, can recognize the meaning of a picture. Audubon showed one the portraits of a cat and of a wasp, at both of which the monkey was much frightened, whereas on seeing the painted picture of a grasshopper and a beetle, its natural food, it “precipitated itself towards the picture, as if to seize the object there represented.”

The beauty of the fur is perhaps the most marked feature of these South American monkeys. One, the squirrel-monkey of Guiana, possesses the most brilliant colouring of any mammalian creature great or small. When lying along a branch, it might be taken for some slender, golden-hued squirrel, did not its round head and baby-like face at once claim a place for it among the monkey tribes. Its arms looks as though they had been dipped in gamboge-yellow dye up to the elbows. Above, the fur shades off into rich hues of greenish-olive, with alternating lengths of short and long hairs, of gold, green, and black, which cover the arched squirrel-like back. Its eyes are a brilliant black, but the cheeks are pink, and the hands flesh-coloured, like those of a very young child. This is a most vivacious little creature, quick and active in its movements, and extremely short-tempered. If it is not fed when it stretches out its imperious little hand, it flies into a passion at once, making ugly faces, shaking the bars of its cage, and uttering shrill bat-like cries; for the squirrel-monkey is by no means the silky little pet which it appears, but a bold, carnivorous little creature, though its prey is only butterflies and the insects of the Guiana forest. Another pretty and extremely rare Central American monkey, lived for some time at the Zoo during the summer of 1893. This was the Negro Tamarin, also a Guiana species, which had not been seen in London for twenty years. Two of these were still alive when the writer visited them in their private apartments at the Zoo. Seated on a small strip of Turkey carpet, they looked like statuettes of the negro chieftains whose portraits adorn the works of travellers in Central Africa. Each was about seven inches high, with head, limbs, and body in perfect proportion. Their faces, hands, and feet were highly polished ebony-black, with black bead-like eyes, and black nails, or rather claws; for the Tamarins, like the squirrel-monkey and the marmosets, are insect-feeders. The fur is close and silky, and covers all the body except the face, ears, and hands. The back is “shot” and mottled with wavy bars of orange, an ornament which seems peculiar to the monkeys of tropical America. Unlike the rest of its near relations, the little “negro” has one thoroughly monkey feature, large, sharp-pointed ears, too like the impish forms of Fuseli to allow it to rank amongst the first in the scale of monkey beauty.

The pre-eminence in this respect belongs without question to the marmosets. Two of these are by this time sufficiently acclimatized to be placed in a separate cage in the large room of the Monkey House, where they live in great contentment with another little tropical rarity, the Pinche monkey from Guiana. Except on very hot days, they prefer to spend their time curled up in a nest of hay, made in a small box at the top of the cage. When the keeper calls them, there is an answering cry from the inmate, and in a few seconds the sounds in the box are like those from a nest of active little twittering birds. Presently three bright little heads and a row of six miniature hands appear at the door, so rapidly put out and withdrawn that it is impossible to say to which of the inmates they belong. Then, after much conversation, apparently directed to the question of which is to get out of bed first, one marmoset descends a few inches of the stick which serves as a ladder to the sleeping-box, eagerly pushed from behind by the others, who are anxious to go shares in the food offered below, but unwilling to fetch it. When once out of the nest, the beauty of the marmoset’s colouring, as well as of its face and limbs, is at once apparent. The fur is more like the plumage of birds or moths than the hair of any four-footed animal, loose and feathery, and mottled with tortoise-shell on black, like the ornament seen in some of the rarer Oriental pheasants; this mottling is exchanged for bars on the tail, and runs up between the shoulders to the neck. The beautiful little pink faces of these black marmosets, set with bright, jewel-like brown eyes, are fringed over the eyebrows and above the ears with white fan-like sprays. Their movements, like their voices and their fur, resemble those of birds rather than of monkeys, a resemblance which their insect-feeding habits indirectly promote. The king of the tribe, the lion marmoset, covered with golden-yellow fur, with a mane-like cloak across its shoulders, is not among the present inmates of the Zoo; but some years ago a pair of black-eared marmosets produced a family, whose welfare was the engrossing care of the keeper. These tiny creatures were scarcely so large as a mouse, with shorter and lighter fur than their parents, but of exquisite proportions, their baby hands being, it is said, one of the most beautiful instances of minute proportion ever seen in young animals. For three weeks the marmoset mother nursed her babies, until after one exceptionally cold night, father, mother, and infants were all found dead.

As a rule it is fog, not cold, which is fatal to the monkeys at the Zoo. In the past year, which was exceptionally sunny and free from fog, though with many weeks of low temperature, scarcely any rare monkeys died. In the season which preceded it the fogs killed sixty. But the marmosets are an exception to the rule. They can no more endure cold than a tropical butterfly, and a fall of a few degrees of temperature on a winter night chills the last sparks of life in their tender little bodies. The Pinche monkey fully deserves its place in the marmoset cage. Except in face it might pass for one of the latter, for its body has the same bird-like plumage, barred with yellow and black, and it warbles a little song like some tropical wren. But its head and neck are plumed with white, like the war-dress of some Indian chief, and its black face and high features make the resemblance more amusing and complete.

Of all the American monkeys the Capuchins seem the most hardy and long-lived species. They occupy a portion of the large central cage at the Zoo, being well able to take care of themselves both in human and monkey society. The last addition to the family is a brown Capuchin, a bright, intelligent, round-headed, round-eyed little monkey, with a long thick tail, and a coat of rich brown fur. Though perfectly fearless when with grown men, pulling them towards it with all the strength of its little arms, this Capuchin has a vehement and aggressive dislike of boys. The instant one approaches the cage it warns him to keep his distance with menacing and imperious gestures, and if a face comes too near the bars, slips its arms through and slaps the odious countenance with the utmost fury and aversion. The monkey appreciation of degrees in human development is as alert and vigilant as the limits which human instinct sets between themselves and the latest prodigy of infant humanity.

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THE LARGER MONKEYS.

THOUGH most of the best specimens of monkey beauty belong to the New World, the richness and variety of the colouring of one or two of the African species is not surpassed by that of any American species. Yet the ornamental value of their skins is little known, even among those professionally engaged in the fur trade. In the catalogues of the great sales at Sir Charles Lampson’s in College Street, there is always a column headed “various,” to which the visitor, tired with the enumeration of the regular commercial skins by the hundred thousand, always turns with a sense of curiosity. Most of these are “dressed” skins, of exceptional rarity and beauty, sold separately, and not in “lots,” like the pelts of musquash, beaver, and bear, and exhibited in a room by themselves instead of by sample. At the last of these great sales which the writer attended, the collection in the room set apart for this purpose was exceptionally interesting, and the buyer of one of the great wholesale fur dealers marked several of the lots for purchase. A row of fourteen skins of the northern (Manchurian) tiger, with long, deep fur and magnificent markings of rich tawny and white, was perhaps the most striking feature in the room. But dozens of leopard and lynx hides, Chinese coats of Thibetan lamb, fleece inwards, ocelot, tiger-cat, and even pythons’ skins, made up a richly-coloured and curious collection. Turning over a pile of small unnamed skins lying on a trestle table, the buyer discovered a set of monkey hides of a species quite unknown to him. The prevailing colour was a beautiful iron-grey, and in the centre of each skin was an oval scutcheon of the richest chestnut brown. These were at once marked for purchase, and next day the writer identified the species to which the skins belong by a visit to the Zoo. They were those of the Diana monkey of West Africa, a creature which, though of a thorough monkey type, has almost the colouring of some of the most ornamental wild ducks. Its face is black, with a white crescent on the forehead, and a long white beard, and a white throat and shoulders. The rest of the body and fore-legs is mainly of a tint of iron-grey, speckled all over with a “pepper and salt” arrangement of dots. In the centre of the back is the deep chestnut patch which has such a curious effect in the dressed skin, and the lower parts are a brilliant pale yellow. The Diana monkey now in the Gardens is an extremely friendly creature, and spends much time in stroking and arranging its beautiful fur. One kept in confinement is said to have always drawn its beard aside with the hand to prevent its being soiled when drinking. The “moustache” monkey, though not so brightly coloured as the Diana, is in many respects a most beautiful creature. It is a medium-sized monkey, five or six times larger than the tiny squirrel monkey of Guiana, but the scheme and method of its colouring is much the same, with the substitution of “powder blue” for gamboge. In most of the “self-coloured” monkeys the whole body seems permeated with some particular colouring matter, black, blue, yellow, or green, as the case may be, just as human beings who have been dosed with nitrate of silver acquire a violet tinge. The colour is brightest in the skin, especially on the face and hands, but extends all over the body, shows between the roots of the soft fur, and seems to climb the hair and colour the “stalk,” just as the green liquid in which a white carnation is placed ascends into the flower and tinges it with an unnatural dye. In the “moustache” monkey the face and lips are a beautiful “powder” blue, the eyes bluish smoke-colour, the inside of the ears as blue as a hyacinth, and the skin which shows between the soft hair on the arms, legs, and chest a paler turquoise shade, which makes the greyish fur of the lower parts a chinchilla colour. The fur on the back is of yellow and black mixed, shading into the grey of the abdomen by gradual changes.

The inmates of the main cages in the centre of the house, with the exception of the Capuchins, are nearly all Old World species, and exhibit much that is strange and interesting, and a good deal that is repulsive in monkey characteristics. Though the cages seemed first to contain a chance medley of all sorts, the monkeys are really distributed with due regard to affinities of continent and species; and a “synoptic” view of the various tribes behind the bars shows better than any book the manner in which certain monkey types, like particular races of mankind, have either advanced or receded over great tracts of continent.

MONKEYS PELTING COOLIES WITH FIR-CONES. _From a
Japanese Drawing._
]

The sole European monkey has retreated literally to the last stone of the continent, and only lives on the great cliff of the Rock of Gibraltar, in the vertical face of which it still maintains itself, midway between sea and sky. On the cliffs of the opposite coast they are more plentiful, and its name of “Barbary Ape” is more appropriate than any European title. That at the Zoo is a female, a large, heavy, round-backed monkey, with olive-tinted fur, a dull, morose face, and a by no means pleasant temper. Like most large monkeys, it is a far heavier, stronger, and more active creature than it appears to be when sitting bunched up on the floor. The big monkeys, not only the baboons, but creatures like the large macaques and the Chinese and Japanese monkeys, have the power of leaping suddenly in almost any direction without any previous contraction of the limbs or body. They may be sitting in the most listless and apparently dejected attitude, and yet in a moment fling themselves upon an enemy, inflict a frightful bite, and be away before he has time for defence or retaliation. The large Chinese Tcheli monkey outside the house will usually give an example of this form of monkey tactics. It is a long-legged, short-bodied, powerful creature, extremely heavy and contemplative in manner, and, it must be owned, an ugly, unpleasant-looking brute, though it is both loyal and attached to its keeper. If a visitor pretends to strike the keeper, or use any rough gesture to him, the monkey catches up and flings whatever missile happens to be at hand, straight at the offender’s head, following the shot itself with a furious and sudden leap, which, if not stopped by the bars, would bring the animal full upon the head and shoulders of the person attacked. If nothing else is available, the monkey flings a handful of sawdust, with violence and precision, thus preparing the way for the onset by partly blinding the enemy. Both the sudden leap and the missile are characteristic of monkey attack, though the last is the special weapon of the Chinese and Japanese apes. In the pine forests of their native country they fling the large and heavy pine-cones—not light fir-cones, but solid and substantial missiles—at the heads of intruders; and the pelting of coolies by the apes is a not unfrequent subject of Chinese and Japanese paintings. The Japanese ape occupies an outside cage at the opposite end of the house to that inhabited by the Tcheli monkey, which it much resembles.

In the large cages in the centre of the Monkey House the animals are mainly grouped geographically. African monkeys, such as the velvet, malbrook, grivet, and green monkey, are in one compartment, Capuchins and other South American monkeys in a second, Indian monkeys in a third. One of the most friendly and amusing is a little “bonnet-monkey,” not much bigger than a rat. Its face is exactly like that of an old Chinaman, with the slanting eyes, flat, short nose, wrinkled and surprised cast of expression, long upper lip, and hair growing backwards with a parting. Another odd little monkey is the little Java pig-tail, “Bob.” He is a most friendly little fellow, running up and catching hold of the keeper’s arm the moment he comes near the cage, or putting its arms round his neck if he leans with his back against the wires. Bob keeps the whole cage-full in good spirits with his tricks. He is not the least afraid of any visitor, catching hold of a human hand or arm in the most familiar way, though his attention may be mainly engaged in what is going on among the monkeys.

Though so many species of monkeys are now known, there is always the chance of the discovery of some unknown and monstrous ape, because these are always animals living in the region of the great forests near the equator. Great forests are now well understood to be the most inaccessible portions of the earth. It is no paradox to say, that the range of life in the ocean abyss, where the explorer gropes for creatures which have invaded regions lying below miles of superincumbent ocean in eternal darkness and everlasting cold, may be better known in fifty years than the list of inhabitants of the Central African forest, with its horrible incubus of twilight gloom, and the matted tangle of encroaching vegetation, which rises solid and unbroken from the rotten soil beneath to the lowering and electric clouds and vapours that brood upon its upper surface. This forbidding region is probably the home of monkeys large and small, of strange forms and unknown habits, which will from time to time find their way to the Zoo, and astonish the visitors to the Monkey House as much as the first arrival of the ourang-outang and the gorilla. Even from the well-known Indian hills a monkey arrived lately which was quite new to the experience of connoisseurs; and it was at first pronounced to be a hybrid between a rhesus and a macaque. It is a large, solemn monkey, with thick “vandyke-brown” fur, and round, tranquil, brown eyes, as deliberate in its movements as the larger apes. Further information identified this monkey as a true macaque, from the little Himalayan State of Sikkim. The doubts as to its identity can hardly be matter for surprise, for the question of the possession of the State of Sikkim itself was only recently settled between the Indian and the Chinese Empires after a small frontier war, and protracted negotiations.

So much has been written on the questions of monkey temper and monkey talk, that the conclusions of one who has for twelve years watched them daily, fed them in health and disease, and has besides that form of insight into animal character which seems innate in some persons to a very high and exceptional degree, deserve some attention. Eustace Jungbluth, a German of Bremen, is the chief keeper of the Monkey Palace—tall, handsome, fair, with the figure of an athlete, and the sound sense of one who prefers to observe and think, than to think and make observation square with theory. He also speaks English, French, and Dutch well, and expresses himself with great clearness. So far as the present writer has been able to gather his views in conversation, he absolutely disbelieves in any form of universal monkey speech, though each species has its own special sounds of fear or pleasure, which are naturally interpreted aright by others of the same kind. The Capuchin monkeys remain good-tempered always, as do many of the smaller species. But as a rule monkey-temper fails after the animals have been for four or five years in the Gardens, and they become uncertain and often unsafe. An ounce of fact is worth a pound of theory. A large monkey escaped in the evening when it was being transferred to another cage. It dodged the net, and was outside and had disappeared almost in a moment. It could not be found, and spent the night out. Next morning it was discovered in a tree, and shot before the Gardens opened. It had been sent to the Zoo because it was “troublesome,” and it was not considered safe to leave it at large even for a morning.

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LIZARDS AND CROCODILES AT THE ZOO.

IT is hardly matter for surprise that the colubrine snakes, with their gorgeous colouring and wonderful form, or the poisonous cobras, rattlesnakes, and puff-adders which inhabit the closed cases in the Reptile House at the Zoo, excite more interest and comment among visitors than the four-footed reptiles, ranging from the alligators of South America to the tiny “gecko” lizards of Southern Europe, which have their abode under the same roof. Yet there is something peculiarly interesting in these modern survivors of the ancient saurians which swarmed in the hot and steaming waters of a prehistoric world, and seem, like the elephants and rhinoceroses, to carry the imagination back to the circumstances and surroundings of a previous though still more ancient era. It may, perhaps, be taken as evidence of the unfitness of such survivals for modern times, that the only inhabitants of the Reptile House which seem to invite unqualified dislike and disgust are the crocodiles and alligators which swarm in the large oval tank in the centre. It seems at first somewhat strange that creatures, many of which are of a strength and ferocity almost equal to that of the largest carnivora, can be kept in safety within the slight barrier formed by the incurved railing which surrounds the pool; but the natural strength of the alligator is only equalled by its sluggishness, and the hideous beasts are content to doze and feed all day in the warm and steaming water. The art of crocodile culture is now fairly understood, and when the baby “basilisk” is transferred from the cool depths of the watering-pot in which he spends his infancy, in the nurseries behind the snakes’ quarters, to the tropical temperature of the tank, it thrives apace. The monster alligator, which now measures some ten feet in length, came from the Mississippi when about twelve months old, nine years ago. Hideous, huge, and hide-bound in armour of horn, it swings round like an enormous eft, and as it lies just beneath the surface of the water, shows, more clearly than any book can picture, the curious adaptation to surroundings of the carnivorous water-lizard. The eyes on their raised orbits are set like dormer-windows in the head. The nostrils are two tiny slits in a raised boss at the end of the nose; apparently the sluggish beast is a quick breather, for the respirations are at the rate of twenty-eight per minute, or nearly double those of a man at rest. Another alligator has been in the collection for twenty-two years, but does not yet equal the size of the later comer, owing, it is said, to the early days spent in the cold and cramped quarters provided before the building of the new house. It is, however, a formidable creature; and as it sprawls on its stomach across the big tree-stump in the centre, with its ugly webbed claws dangling on either side, its mouth partly open, and its tail drooping in the water, its appearance is sufficiently repulsive to deter the most well-meaning visitor from offering the charitable bun. Crocodiles from the Nile, India, and Ceylon share the waters with the alligators. The crocodile evidently bears the same analogy to the alligator as the frog to the toad. It is lighter in colour and in build, and a more active, as well as a more malicious creature. Neither is it so entirely hideous, though the lower jaw shows projecting tusks like those of a wild boar. The creature’s eyes, celebrated in connection with the “crocodile tears,” with which legend declared that it attracted its sympathizing victims to the bank of the stream, are highly “decorative,” if not beautiful. The head, narrow and flat, resembles the head of a snake; the nose is sharp, and the fixed and motionless eyes are of the palest dusty gold, set in a short horny pillar of a deeper golden brown. The crocodile’s coat of armour is less complete than that of the alligator; and its quick, vivacious movements make it far more troublesome to the keepers when the tank has to be refilled and cleansed, than the big alligators, which will allow themselves to be used as stepping-stones as the water ebbs away. The crocodiles and their kin exhaust the list of noxious lizards at the Zoo, with one curious exception. The heloderin, a fat and torpid lizard from Arizona, is supposed to be the sole existing member of its tribe which possesses not only the poison-glands which exist in most of the toads, but also the true poison-teeth, with a channel for the emission of the venom. The lizard is about 1½ ft. long, with a fat, fleshy body, a round tail ending in a blunt point, and a flat head with squared sides, resembling a small padlock. The whole body is covered with a curious coat of scales, like black and pink beads, arranged in an arabesque pattern. In its daily life it is a dull and stupid creature, feeding mainly on eggs, which it breaks and laps with its tongue. Its first and only victim was a guinea-pig, which was put into its cage with a view to testing the reports as to its poisonous nature, which were by no means universally credited. The lizard bit the guinea-pig in the leg, and the animal died in a minute and a half—almost as soon as after the bite of a cobra.

ALLIGATOR. From a photograph by Gambier Bolton.
]

Eggs are favourite food with many lizards and snakes; but the “monitor,” a very large and handsome lizard approaching the size of the half-grown crocodile, is perhaps the most remarkable egg-swallower of the tribe. It bolts the eggs unbroken, and the oval morsel may be watched in its slow descent down the long neck until it disappears in the lower regions. Many of the smaller lizards in the house are almost unmatched for quaintness of form and beauty of colouring, among the inhabitants of the Zoo. It sometimes happens that the chameleons die in winter before the summer stock has arrived to take their place, as most of those brought from the Cape die when the vessels enter the cold atmosphere of the English Channel. But the “horned lizards” of California are hardly less amusing in form and habits than the true chameleons. Shaped like a miniature sole, their backs bristling with pinkish spikes like the thorns of a briar-rose, they bury themselves in the sand at the bottom of their cage until the head only projects, presenting an exact resemblance to one of the thorny “burrs” which lie scattered on the Californian desert. If possible, the lizard remains still until the spiders and other insects walk unsuspecting into its mouth; but at the Zoo, where insects are scarce, the horned lizards have to some extent abandoned concealment, and rush upon their prey with a suddenness and ferocity most amusing in such tiny creatures. The writer watched a violent contest between a horned lizard and a “gecko” for the possession of a mealworm, which was wriggling on the sand. The “gecko,” one of the swift and agile little lizards which are so common in Southern Europe, was darting down from a branch above just as the horned lizard made its spring, and each seized the mealworm at opposite ends. In the tug-of-war which followed, the ground-lizard proved an easy winner; and the “gecko” retired defeated, to finish pulling off its old skin, which hung loosely round its shoulders like a jacket. The cast skin, which was of an exquisite, semi-transparent grey colour, like that of a moonstone, was pulled off by the lizard in long strips, by the aid of its teeth and feet. The toads perform this operation in a far neater manner, pulling their cast skins over their heads with their hands, as a football-player strips off his jersey.

Perhaps the tamest, if not the most beautiful among the smaller reptiles, are the odd little palm-lizards which have recently arrived at the Zoo. They are vegetable feeders, and their appetite for cabbage-leaves is so keen, and the diet supplied so liberal, that after a hearty meal they resemble a well-stuffed oval pincushion with a small lizard’s head, feet, and tail attached to the padding. Yet, even in this condition, they are ready to eat if fresh food be offered to them, sitting contentedly in the visitor’s hand, and “swelling visibly” as they munch their cabbage, like the lady who excited the alarm of Mr. Weller, senior, at the Temperance tea. A near neighbour of the palm-lizards is the existing type of the impostor frog, who tried to inflate himself to the size of the bullock, according to the fable. Æsop’s frog, no doubt, lived in the swamps of Lake Copais; but the strange creature, which naturalists have named the “adorned ceratophorus,” but which is nothing but an enormous fat round caricature of a frog, with a mouth wide enough to swallow a young chicken, lives in South America. His daily habit is to bury himself in the loose earth where small animals, such as rats, mice, other frogs, and the young of ground-birds, ducks or chickens are likely to wander. Half covered with dry earth, the frog resembles a patch of greenish wet moss on wet mud. The chicken or rat which approaches this is immediately seized by an enormous mouth, which opens and shuts with a snap like the back of a watch. Like other selfish and greedy people, this frog is extremely short-tempered and resentful when its own comfort is interfered with: and when poked, and otherwise teased, swells its body out to nearly double its original size, and slowly hops with gasps and growls after its tormentor in a paroxysm of rage and excitement.

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FROM THE ANIMALS’ POINT OF VIEW.[13]

Footnote 13:

The immunity of the keepers at the Zoo from serious injury or attack
by the animals in their charge is _à priori_ evidence that the
animals’ point of view is not necessarily hostile.

ONE of the most curious and unconsciously paradoxical claims ever advanced for man in his relation to animals is that by which M. Georges Leroy, philosopher, encyclopædist, and _lieutenant des chasses_ of the Park of Versailles, the vindicator of Buffon and Montesquieu against the criticisms of Voltaire, explains in his _Lettres sur les Animaux_ the intellectual debt which the carnivorous animals owe to human persecution. He pictures with wonderful cleverness the development of their powers of forethought, memory, and reasoning which the interference of man, the enemy and “rival,” forces upon them, and the consequent intellectual advance which distinguishes the _loup jeune et ignorant_ from the _loup adulte et instruit_. The philosophic _lieutenant des chasses_ had before long ample opportunities for comparing the “affinities” which he had discovered between civilized man and “instructed” wolves, in the experiences of the French Revolution; but without following his fortunes in those troublous times for game-preservers, we may perhaps return to the question of the natural relation of animals to man, which, as pictured by Rousseau to prove his _à priori_ notions of a state of nature, so justly incurred the criticism of the practical observer and practised writer, M. Georges Leroy.

That man is, generally speaking, from the animals’ point of view, an object of fear, hostility, or rapine, is to-day most unfortunately true. But whether this is their natural relation, and not one induced, and capable perhaps of change, is by no means certain. Savage man, who has generally been first in contact with animals, is usually a hunter, and therefore an object of dislike to the other hunting animals, and of dread to the hunted. But civilized man, with his supply of bread and beef, is not necessarily a hunter; and it is just conceivable that he might be content to leave the animals in a newly-discovered country unmolested, and condescend, when not better employed, to watch their attitude towards himself. The impossible island in _The Swiss Family Robinson_, in which half the animals of two hemispheres were collected, would be an ideal place for such an experiment. But, unfortunately, uninhabited islands seldom contain more than a few species, and those generally birds, or sea-beasts; and in newly-discovered game regions, savage man has generally been before us with his arrows, spears, and pitfalls. Some instances of the first contact of animals with man have, however, been preserved in the accounts of the early voyages collected by Hakluyt and others, though the hungry navigators were generally more intent on victualling their ships with the unsuspecting beasts and birds, or on noting those which would be useful commodities for “trafficke,” than in cultivating friendly relations with the animal inhabitants of the newly-discovered islands. Thus, we read that near Newfoundland there were “islands of birds, of a sandy-red, but with the multitudes of birds upon them they look white. The birds sit there as thick as stones lie in a paved street. The greatest of the islands is about a mile in compass. The second is a little less. The third is a very little one, like a small rock. At the second of these islands there lay on the shore in the sunshine about thirty or forty sea-oxen or morses, which, when our boat came near them, presently made into the sea, and _swam after the boat_.” Curiosity, not fear or hostility, was, then, the emotion roused in the sea-oxen by the first sight of man. The birds, whales, and walruses in the Wargate Sea and near Jan Mayen’s Land, were no less tame, and the sea-lions in the Southern Pacific, the birds that Barents first discovered in Novaya Zembla, and even the antelopes which the early explorers encountered in the least-inhabited parts of Central South Africa, seem all to have regarded the newly-discovered creature, man, with interest and without fear. Sir Samuel Baker, in his _Wild Beasts_ _and their Ways_, remarks on the “curious and inexplicable fact that certain animals and birds exhibit a peculiar shyness of human beings, although they are only exposed to the same conditions as others which are more bold.” He instances the wildness of the curlew and the golden plover, and contrasts it with the tameness of swallows and wagtails. The reason does not seem far to seek. The first are constantly sought for food, the latter are left undisturbed. Perhaps the best instance of such a contrast is that of the hawfinch and the crossbill, birds of closely allied form and appearance. The hawfinch, which is probably the shyest of English small birds, seems to have acquired a deep mistrust of man. But the crossbills, on the rare occasions when they descend from the uninhabited forests of the North into our Scotch or English woods, are absolutely without fear or mistrust of human beings, whom they see very probably for the first time. When animals do show fear on first acquaintance, it is probably due, not to any spontaneous dread of man as man, but because they mistake him for something else. “Nearly all animals,” says Sir Samuel Baker, “have some natural enemy which keeps them on the alert, and makes them suspicious of all strange objects and sounds that might denote the approach of danger:” and it is to this that he attributes the timidity of many kinds of game in districts where they “have never been attacked by firearms.” A most curious instance of this mistaken identity occurred lately when Kerguelen Island was visited by H.M.S. _Volage_ and a party of naturalists and astronomers, to observe the transit of Venus. There were large colonies of penguins nesting on the island, which, though the place is so little frequented by man, used at first to run away up the slopes _inland_ when the sailors appeared. They apparently took the men for seals, and thus took what appeared the natural way of escaping from their marine enemies. They soon found out their mistake, for it is said that “when they became accustomed to being chased by men”—an experience for which the sailors seem to have given them every opportunity—“the penguins acquired the habit of taking to the water at the first alarm.” In another colony, the nesting females would settle down peacefully on their eggs if the visitors stood still. “The whole of this community of penguins (they numbered about two thousand) were subsequently boiled down into ‘hare-soup’ for the officers and men of H.M.S. _Volage_,” writes the Rev. A. E. Eaton, “and very nice they found it.” We may compare with this destruction of the penguins, the letter of Hakluyt on the voyage to Newfoundland by Antony Parkhurst, describing with high approval the business facilities for the fishing trade offered by the tameness of the great auks,—called “penguins” in the passage:—“There are seagulls, musses, ducks, and many other kind of birdes store too long to write about, especially at one island named ‘Penguin,’ where we may drive them on a planke into our ship as many as shall lade her. These birds are also called penguins, and cannot flie; there is more meat in one of them than in a goose. The Frenchmen that fish neere the Grand Bank doe bring small store of flesh with them, but do victuall themselves alwayes with these birdes.”

The point of view from which the lion or tiger looks on man, is perhaps not so far removed from that of the non-carnivorous creatures as might be supposed. Man is certainly not the natural food of any animal—except of sharks and alligators, if he is so rash as to go out of his native element into theirs—and if the item “man” were subtracted from the bill-of-fare of all the carnivora, they would never want a meal. The notion of the natural attitude of a lion to a young lady,—

“When as that tender virgin he did spye,
Upon her he did run full greedily,
To have at once devoured her tender corse,”