Part 16

“Both my specimens,” he wrote, “were remarkable for good-temper and playfulness; no domestic kitten could be more so. They were always courting intercourse with persons passing by, and in the expression of the countenance, _which was always open and smiling_, showed the greatest delight when noticed, throwing themselves on their backs, and delighting in being tickled and rubbed. On board the ship there was a small Musi dog, who used to play round the cage with one of these animals, and it was amusing to see the playfulness and tenderness with which the latter came in contact with its inferior-sized companion. When fed with a fowl that had died, he seized the prey, and after sucking the blood and tearing it a little, he amused himself for hours in throwing it about, and jumping after it, in the manner that a cat plays with a mouse before it is quite dead. He never seemed to look on men or children as prey, but as companions. The natives assert that when wild they live principally on poultry, birds, and the smaller kind of deer. They are not found in numbers, and may be considered rather a rare animal, even in the southern part of Sumatra. Both specimens constantly amused themselves by jumping and clinging to the top of their cage, and throwing a somersault, and twisting themselves round in the manner of a squirrel when confined, the tail being extended, and showing to great advantage when so expanded.”

It is obvious that so active and beautiful an animal could not be seen with advantage, or kept in good health in the cramped little cages of the present Cat House. But the Society still possess a good specimen of the finest of the “self-coloured” puma-cats,—the golden cat of Sumatra, an island in which every ornamental species, whether bird or beast, seems endowed with a double gift of beauty. In colouring it is unique, and its proportions are as elegant as its tints. The fur on the back is the colour of the red variety of gold-stone, with the texture of thick-piled velvet. This warm and luminous hue pales into white on the belly, and runs up the chest, ending on the chin, which is square and almost bearded, giving a tigerish expression to the head. On the mask of the face the reddy golden fur is striped with wavy lines of orange and white. The eyes are strangely large, dark, clouded, beryl-brown globes, with smoky-yellow topaz lights, and shine like round translucent gems set in a velvet case. This mass of orange-tawny, gold, and topaz, is set off by the pale rose-pink of the nose and lips, and the not unfrequent exhibition of rows of ivory teeth. The whole body is elegant and symmetrical, and the colouring so exactly balanced, that the warm white of the lower parts which ends in front at the point of the chin, extends with the same precision along the lower part of the tail even to the tip, as if the golden cat were fresh from a swim across a lake of cream. Among the _lacunæ_ in this part of the collection the marbled tiger-cat, the viverrine cat, the Pampas-cat, the Margay, the Eyra cat, the jaguarondi, and the leopard-cat of Bengal may be mentioned. Most of these have been seen at the Zoo at one time or another, and Mr. Bartlett found the “Eyra cat” a most affectionate and amusing pet. It is an American wild-cat, but far longer and lither in shape than others of the true cats, resembling a genet in shape. It is a tree-climbing species, as active on the branches as a squirrel.

On the other hand, there are a pair of ocelots which, in the absence of the clouded tiger, may be taken as representing almost the highest development of ornament among four-footed animals. One of the pair comes from Southern and the other from Central America. No two ocelots are marked exactly alike, but the general tone and shading is sufficiently alike to compare them generally with other species. The Argus pheasant alone seems to afford a parallel to the beauties of the ocelot’s fur, especially in the development of the wonderful “ocelli,” which, though never reaching in the beast the perfect cup and ball ornament seen on the wings of the bird, can be traced in all its earlier stages of spots and wavy lines, as far as the irregular shell-shaped ring and dot on the feet, sides, and back, just as in the subsidiary ornament of the Argus pheasant’s feathers. Most of the ground tint of the fur is a pearly smoke-colour, on which the spots develop from mere dots upon the legs, and speckles on the feet and toes to large egg-shaped ocelli on the flanks. There are also two beautiful pearl-coloured spots at the back of each ear, like those which form the common ornaments of the wings of many moths. As in the golden cat, the very large convex translucent eye and the pink nose make the face of the ocelot a wonderful combination of contrasts in colour and texture. Apparently they are tame and friendly, though the conditions of their life at the Zoo are hardly such as tend to promote good-temper.

The remaining occupants of the Cat House are mostly lynxes, or half-lynxes, like the servals and caracals, or civets and genets. There is a fine collection of the last pretty little creatures, which are far more like ichneumons and mongooses than any form of cat. The most interesting fact about these thoroughly Oriental-looking beasts is that one is actually found in the Alps, where one could almost as soon expect to discover a cobra or a crocodile. They are beautifully marked and spotted with black and dark-brown or smoky-grey, and are as restless as a mongoose or a coati.

THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS.

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.

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.

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.

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.