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PREFACE

The present work is the natural product of some years devoted to a study of the speech and habits of monkeys. It has led up to the special study of the great apes. The matter contained herein is chiefly a record of the facts tabulated during recent years in that field of research.

The aim in view is to convey to the casual reader a more correct idea than now prevails concerning the physical, mental, and social habits of these apes.

The favourable conditions under which the writer has been placed, in the study of these animals in the freedom of their native jungle, have not hitherto been enjoyed by any other student of Nature.

A careful aim to avoid all technical terms and scientific phraseology has been adhered to, and the subject treated in a simple style. Tedious details are relieved by an ample supply of anecdotes taken from the writer's own observations, and most of them are the acts of his own pets or of apes in a wild state. The author has refrained from rash deductions and abstruse theories, but has sought to place the animals here treated in their true light, believing that to dignify the apes is not to degrade man, but to exalt him even more.

It is hoped that a more perfect knowledge of these animals may bring man into closer fellowship and deeper sympathy with Nature, and cause him to realise that all creatures think and feel in some degree, however small.

THE AUTHOR.