The most remarkable thing done by our smart little friend was the following: One day he got hold of a hearth-brush, one of the kind which has the handle screwed into the brush. In his usual fondness for experiment he at once began on the handle, and soon had it unscrewed and out of the brush. Then he began to try and find the way to screw it in again.
At first he put the wrong end of the handle into the hole and turned it round and round, always the _right way for screwing_. Then he tried the other end, still always turning only the right way. How he knew the way the screw should turn is a mystery. The work was a hard one, for he had to use both hands on the handle, and the brush, with its bristles, would not lie still. Next he tried holding it with his foot, and even then it was not easy to get the first turn of the screw to take hold. When this was done he turned the handle round and round until it was fully screwed in.
The strange thing was that, in all his efforts, he never tried to turn the handle the wrong way; he always screwed from right to left. The work done, he unscrewed it and screwed it in again, this time more easily. He kept on until he could do it without trouble and then threw it aside for some other amusement.
Here is a case where the animal tried for himself a thing he had never seen done, not for anything to be gained, but simply to find out how to do it. He knew somehow the right from the wrong way, and when he had finished he had no further use for the brush. He had learned that lesson, solved that riddle, and was ready to try something else.
While men like to have the monkey for a pet, the monkey imitates them by having pets of its own. It has a fancy for this and likes to have something or some animal under its care. It may be a doll, a guinea pig, a white rat, or anything to which it takes a fancy. This was the case with a monkey we are told of, which was very fond of nursing.
His fancy in this way brought him to a sad end. Seeing a litter of young pigs, he grew eager to have one of these for a pet. Watching till the mother pig was at the other end of the pen he popped down and seized one of the little grunters. With his prize he leaped to the door of the pig-stye, but it gave way under his weight and he fell back into the jaws of the furious sow, who with one crunch put an end to the pet-lover's career.