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 abhorrence to the appearance of the wound, not by any means against the wounded; since in their domestic habits, they are considered to be peaceable and affectionate in their bearings towards each other.  The strong will exercise mastery over the weak where food is scarce, but, in a general way, they are by no means quarrelsome or revengeful amongst themselves.  They are known to hold by each other in defending rights and privileges, if the accounts given by credible Natives be true, who add that a whole colony of monkeys have been known to issue forth in a body to revenge an injury sustained by an individual of their tribe; often firing a whole village of chupha-roofs, where the aggressor is known to be a resident, who in his anger may have maimed or chastised one of their colony.

The female monkey is remarkable for her attachment to her progeny, which she suckles until it is able to procure food for its own sustenance.  When one of her young dies, the mother is observed to keep it closely encircled in her arms, moaning piteously with true maternal feelings of regret, and never parting with it from her embrace until the dead body becomes an offensive mass:  and when at last she quits her hold, she lays it on the ground before her, at no great distance, watching with intense anxiety the dead body before her, which she can no longer fold in her embrace, until the work of decomposing has altered the form of the creature that claimed her tender attachment.  What an example is here given to unnatural mothers who neglect or forsake their offspring!