en in the larger animals.

Education is both a proof and a promoter of reason in all animals.
This removes them from their natural or instinctive position, and
brings forth the full development of the mental powers. This is
exhibited in the performance of well-trained dogs, especially among
pointers and setters. Again, in the feats performed by educated
animals in the circus, where the elephant has lately endeavored to
prove a want of common sense by standing on his head. Nevertheless,
however absurd the trick, which man may teach the animal to perform,
the very fact of their performance substantiates an amount of reason in
the animal.

Monkeys, elephants and dogs are naturally endowed with a larger share
of the reasoning power than other animals, which is frequently
increased to a wonderful extent by education. The former, even in
their wild state, are so little inferior to some natives, either in
their habits or appearance, that I should feel some reluctance in
denying them an almost equal share of reason; the want Of speech
certainly places them below the Veddahs, but the monkeys, on the other
hand, might assert a superiority by a show of tails.

Monkeys vary in intelligence according to their species, and may be
taught to do almost anything. There are several varieties in Ceylon,
among which the great black wanderoo, with white whiskers, is the
nearest in appearance to the human race. This monkey stands upward of
three feet high, and weighs about eighty pounds. He has immense
muscular power, and he has also a great peculiarity in the formation of
the skull, which is closely allied to that of a human being, the lower
jaw and the upper being in a straight line with the forehead. In
monkeys the jaws usually project. This species exists in most parts of
Ceylon, but I have seen it of a larger size at Newera Ellia thin in any
of the low-country districts.

Elephants are proverbially sagacious, both in their wild state and when
domesticated. I have previously described the building of a dam by a
tame elephant, which was an exhibition of reason hardly to be expected
in any animal. They are likewise wonderfully sagacious in a wild state
in preserving themselves from accidents, to which, from their bulk and
immense weight, they would be particularly liable, such as the
crumbling of the verge of a precipice, the insecurity of a bridge or
the suffocating depth of mud in a lake.

It is the popular opinion, and I h