Perfectly aware of the impunity with which they are permitted to act, these monkeys prefer human habitations to the forests which form the natural home of their race, and crowd into the villages and temples, the latter being always swarming with the long-tailed host. As is the case with the Rhesus, the Hoonuman monkeys are much too fond of helping themselves from the shops and stalls, and if they can find a convenient roof, will sit there and watch for the arrival of the most dainty fruits. However, the natives, superstitious as they are, and unwilling to inflict personal injury on a monkey, have no scruple in making arrangements by which a monkey that trespasses on forbidden spots will inflict injury on itself. They may not shoot or wound in any way the monkeys which cluster on their roofs, and the animals are so perfectly aware of the fact, that they refuse to be driven away by shouts and menacing gestures. But, they contrive to make the roofs so uncomfortable by covering them with thorns, that the monkeys are obliged to quit their points of vantage, and to choose some spot where they can sit down without fear of hurting themselves. [Illustration: A PRIVILEGED RACE.] That the Hindoos should pay homage almost divine to a monkey, does seem equally absurd and contemptible. But, strange as this superstition may be, and the more strange because the intellectual powers of the educated Hindoos are peculiarly subtle and penetrating, it was shared by a greater, a mightier, and a still more intellectual race, now extinct as a nation. The ancient Egyptians worshipped the baboon, and ranked it among the most potent of their deities; and it can but strike us with wonder when we reflect that a people who could erect buildings perfectly unique in the history of the world, who held the foremost place in civilization, who perfected arts which we, at a distance of three thousand years, have only just learned, should pay divine honours to monkeys, bulls, and snakes. Such, however, was the case; and we find that the modern Hindoo shows as great reverence for the identical animals as did the Egyptian when Pharaoh was king, and Joseph his prime minister.