Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1883 — A MONKEY AND A MIRROR. [ARTICLE]

A MONKEY AND A MIRROR.

I witnessed the following incident in the Jardin des Plantes, not many years ago, but it struck me greatly at the time and I have narrated it repeatedly in the interval. A large ape—l believe anthropoid, but cannot tell the species -—was in the great iron cage with a number of small monkeys and was lording it over them with many wild gambols to the amusement of a crowd of spectators. Many things—fruits and the like—had been thrown between the bars into the cage, which the ape was always fofward to seize. At last some one threw in a small hand lookingglass, with a strong-made frame of wood. This the ape at once laid hold of and began to brandish like a ham. mer. Suddenly he was arrested by the •eflection of himself in the glass and looked puzzled for a moment; then he darted his head behind the glass to find the other of his kind that he evidently supposed to be there. Astonished at finding nothing, he apparently bethought himself that he had not been

quick enough with his movement.* He now proceeded to raise and draw the glass nearer to him with great (Caution; and then, with a swifter dart, looked behind. Again finding nothing, he repeated it once more. He now passed from astonishment to anger, and began to beat with the frame violently on the floor of the cage- Soon the glass was shattered and pieces fell out. Continuing to beat, he was in the course of one blow again arrested by his image in the glass remaining in the frame. Then, as it seemed, he determined to make one trial more. More circumspectly than ever the whole first part of the process was gone through with, n*re violently than ever the final dart was made. His fury over this last failure knew no bounds. He crunched the frame and glass together with his teeth, he beat on the floor, he crunched again, till nothing but splinters were left.