ed the hospitality of the landlord,
not a blade is broken, or a seed destroyed in the fields of corn to the
right and left of their plantation. But woe to the farmer who neglects
this provision; his fields will not only be visited by the marauders, but
their vengeance will be displayed in the wasteful destruction of his
cultivation. This undoubtedly looks more like reason than instinct; and if
credit could be given to half the extraordinary tales that are told of
them, the monkeys of India might justly be entitled to a higher claim than
that of instinct for their actions.

Monkeys seem to be aware that snakes are their natural enemies. They never
advance in pursuit of, yet they rarely run from a snake; unless its size
renders it too formidable an object for their strength and courage to
attack with anything like a prospect of success in destroying it. So great
is the animosity of the monkey race to these reptiles, that they attack
them systematically, after the following manner:--

When a snake is observed by a monkey, he depends on his remarkable agility
as a safeguard from the enemy. At the most favourable opportunity he
seizes the reptile just below the head with a firm grasp, then springs to
a tree, if available, or to any hard substance near at hand, on which he
rubs the snake's head with all his strength until life is extinct; at
intervals smelling the fresh blood as it oozes from the wounds of his
victim. When success has crowned his labour, the monkey capers about his
prostrate enemy, as if in triumph at the victory he has won; developing,
as the Natives say, in this, a striking resemblance to man.

Very few monkeys, in their wild state, ever recover from inflicted wounds;
the reason assigned by those who have studied their usual habits is, that
whenever a poor monkey has been wounded, even in the most trifling way,
his associates visit him by turns, when each visitor, without a single
exception, is observed to scratch the wound smartly with their nails. A
wound left to itself might be expected to heal in a short time, but thus
irritated by a successive application of their sharp nails, it inflames
and increases. Mortification is early induced by the heated atmosphere,
and death rapidly follows.

The monkeys' motives for adding to their neighbour's anguish, is accounted
for by some speculators on the score of their aversion to the unnatural
smell of blood; or they are supposed to be actuated by a natural
abho