The Speech of Monkeys

On one of my visits he displayed his temper, and made an attack upon me because I refused to let go of a saucer from which I was feeding him with some milk. I jerked him up by the chain and slapped him sharply, whereupon he instantly laid the side of his head on the floor, put out his tongue, and made just such a sound as Jokes had made a number of times before. It occurred to me that it was a sign of surrender, and many subsequent tests have confirmed this opinion. Mrs. M. French Sheldon, in her journey through East Africa, shot a small monkey in a forest near Lake Charla. She described to me how the little fellow stood high up in a tree and chattered to her in his sharp, musical voice, until at the crack of her gun he fell mortally wounded. When he was laid dying at her feet, he turned his bright little eyes pleadingly upon her as if to ask for pity. Touched by his appeal, she took the little creature in her arms to try to soothe him. Again and again he would touch his tongue to her hand as if kissing it, and seemed to wish in the hour of death to be caressed, even by the hand that slew him, and which had taken from him without reward that life which could be of no value except to spend in the wild forest where his kindred monkeys live.