The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

Keeper Rawlinson, of the Primate House, who was in the Boer War, states that on one occasion when his company was deploying along the steep side of a rock-covered kopje a troop of baboons above them rolled and threw so many stones down at the men that finally two machine guns were let loose on the savage beasts to disperse them. THE CURTAIN On one side of the heights above the River of Life stand the men of this little world,--the fully developed, the underdone, and the unbaked, in one struggling, seething mass. On the other side, and on a level but one step lower down, stands the vanguard of the long procession of "Lower" Animals, led by the chimpanzee, the orang and the gorilla. The natural bridge that almost spans the chasm lacks only the keystone of the arch. Give the apes just one thing,--speech,--and the bridge is closed! Take away from a child its sight, speech and hearing, and the whole world is a mystery, which only the hardest toil of science and education ever can reveal. Give back hearing and sight, without speech, and even then the world is only half available. Give a chimpanzee articulate expression and language, and no one could fix a limit to his progress. Take away from a man the use of one lobe of his brain, and he is rendered speechless. The great Apes have travelled up the River of Life on the opposite side from Man, but they are only one lap behind him. Let us not deceive ourselves about that. Remember that truth is inexorable in its demands to be heard.