Brehm s Thierleben, B. i. s. 10-87.) state that the American and
African monkeys which they kept tame, certainly revenged themselves.
Sir Andrew Smith, a zoologist whose scrupulous accuracy was known to
many persons, told me the following story of which he was himself an
eye-witness; at the Cape of Good Hope an officer had often plagued a
certain baboon, and the animal, seeing him approaching one Sunday for
parade, poured water into a hole and hastily made some thick mud, which
he skilfully dashed over the officer as he passed by, to the amusement
of many bystanders. For long afterwards the baboon rejoiced and
triumphed whenever he saw his victim.
The love of a dog for his master is notorious; as an old writer
quaintly says (9. Quoted by Dr. Lauder Lindsay, in his Physiology of
Mind in the Lower Animals, Journal of Mental Science, April 1871, p.
38.), A dog is the only thing on this earth that luvs you more than he
luvs himself.
In the agony of death a dog has been known to caress his master, and
every one has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked
the hand of the operator; this man, unless the operation was fully
justified by an increase of our knowledge, or unless he had a heart of
stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.
As Whewell (10. Bridgewater Treatise, p. 263.) has well asked, who
that reads the touching instances of maternal affection, related so
often of the women of all nations, and of the females of all animals,
can doubt that the principle of action is the same in the two cases?
We see maternal affection exhibited in the most trifling details; thus
Rengger observed an American monkey (a Cebus) carefully driving away
the flies which plagued her infant; and Duvaucel saw a Hylobates
washing the faces of her young ones in a stream. So intense is the
grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably
caused the death of certain kinds kept under confinement by Brehm in N.
Africa. Orphan monkeys were always adopted and carefully guarded by the
other monkeys, both males and females. One female baboon had so
capacious a heart that she not only adopted young monkeys of other
species, but stole young dogs and cats, which she continually carried
about. Her kindness, however, did not go so far as to share her food
with her adopted offspring, at which Brehm was surprised, as his
monkeys always divided everything quite fairly with their own young
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