"How long does it require for pure prussic acid to produce its physiological action?" "I do not know." He ignored my reply, and continued: "Since there exists a relative difference between the time that is required for ether and chloroform to produce insensibility, and between the actions and resultant effects of all known anaesthetics, intoxicants, and narcotics, I think you are hypercritical. Some nerve excitants known to you act slowly, others quickly; why not others still instantaneously? If you can rest your assertion on any good basis, I will gladly meet your questions, but I do not accept such evidence as you now introduce, and I do not care to argue for both parties." Again I was becoming irritated, for I was not satisfied with the manner in which I upheld my part of the argument, and naturally, as is usually the case with the defeated party, became incensed at my invincible antagonist. "Well," I said, "I criticise your credulity. The drunkards of the drunkards' cavern were beyond all credence. I can not conceive of such abnormal creations, even in illusion. Had I met with your experiences I would not have supposed, for an instant, that the fantastic shapes could have been aught but a dream, or the result of hallucination, while, without a question, you considered them real." "You are certainly pressed for subjects about which to complain when you resort to criticising the possibilities in creations of a mind under the influence of a more powerful intoxicant than is known to surface earth," he remarked. "However, I will show you that nature fashions animals in forms more fantastic than I saw, and that even these figures were not overdrawn--" Without heeding his remark, I interrupted his discourse, determined to have my say: "And I furthermore question the uncouth personage you describe as your guide. Would you have me believe that such a being has an existence outside an abnormal thought-creation?" "Ah," he replied, "you have done well to ask these two questions in succession, for you permit me to answer both at once. Listen: The Monkey, of all animals, seems to approach closest to man in figure, the Siamang Gibon of Asia, the Bald-headed Saki of South America, with its stub of a tail, being nearest. From these types we have great deviations as in the Wanderer of India, with its whiskered face, and the Black Macaque of the Island of Celebes, with its hairy topknot, and hairless stub of a tail, or the well-known Squirrel Monkey, with its long supple tail, and the Thumbless Spider Monkey, of South America. Between these types we have among monkeys, nearly every conceivable shape of limb and figure, and in color of their faces and bodies, all the shades of the rainbow. "Some Squirrels jump and then sail through the air. The Sloth can barely move on the earth. Ant-eaters have no teeth at all, while the Grizzly Bear can crush a gun barrel with its molars.