The second case is to be found recorded by Sir W. Hoste in his _Memoirs_, and is thus alluded to by Jesse in _Gleanings from Natural History_: “One of his officers, coming home after a long day’s shooting, saw a female monkey running along the rocks, with her young one in her arms. He immediately fired, and the animal fell. On his coming up, she grasped her little one close to her breast, and with her other hand pointed to the wound which the ball had made, and which had entered above her breast. Dipping her finger in the blood, and then holding it up, she seemed to reproach him with being the cause of her death, and consequently that of the young one, to which she frequently pointed. ‘I never,’ says Sir William, ‘felt so much as when I heard the story, and I determined never to shoot one of these animals as long as I lived.’” Monkeys are supposed to be less intelligent than men; and yet I never heard of a soldier, shot down in battle, reproaching in this dumb but dreadful way the king or cabinet ministers who had sent him out to be killed. But then, when one comes to think of it, it is not quite such an easy thing for soldiers to do as it is for monkeys. Many a poor fellow, perhaps, may have had it in his mind, and even got his finger ready; but when he looked round, just before dying, for his king or his emperor or the cabinet ministers—why, they were not there, so what would have been the use of holding it up? FOOTNOTES [1] Many birds are accustomed to eject the indigestible portions of their food—bones, fur, feathers, etc., or the shells and shards of crustaceans and insects—in the form of balls or pellets, which are, indeed, very interesting objects, and both scientifically and as not leading to the extermination of the species, would make a far preferable collection to one of birds’ eggs. Let anyone who doubts this pick up upon some gull-haunted island a score or so of the curious little globes made of fragments of crab-shells cemented together, which lie all about, or some of the dried frog-pellets of owls, over a marsh. He must then—or he ought to—confess that such objects are more curious, if less pretty, than birds’ eggs—which, however, as ornaments, nobody values in the least—whilst by their very nature they teach us something in regard to the habits of each species, which the latter do not. The pellets of rooks, for instance, which I have found by the hundred, composed, some entirely of innutritious vegetable materials, and others (almost entirely) of earth, are most instructive from this point of view. In fact, the results and tendencies springing out of this kind of collecting would be wholly advantageous both to birds and to natural history; so that one of the most useful things that could be started in these “killing times” would be a club or fraternity of such collectors.