Project Gutenberg #20417
The Outline of Science, Volume 1
J. Arthur Thomson
1922Thomson's broad popular-science survey of astronomy, biology, and Earth science, prepared section by section from Project Gutenberg HTML.
Project Gutenberg #20417 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for MojiMori from public-domain source metadata
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Correlated with the quality of restless inquisitiveness and delight in activity for its own sake there is the quality of quickness. We mean not merely the locomotor agility that marks most monkeys, but quickness of perception and plan. It is the sort of quality that life among the branches will engender, where it is so often a case of neck or nothing. It is the quality which we describe as being on the spot, though the phrase has slipped from its original moorings. Speaking of his Bonnet Monkey, an Indian macaque, second cousin to the kind that lives on the Rock of Gibraltar, Professor S. J. Holmes writes: "For keenness of perception, rapidity of action, facility in forming good practical judgments about ways and means of escaping pursuit and of attaining various other ends, Lizzie had few rivals in the animal world.... Her perceptions and decisions were so much more rapid than my own that she would frequently transfer her attention, decide upon a line of action, and carry it into effect before I was aware of what she was about. Until I came to guard against her nimble and unexpected manœuvres, she succeeded in getting possession of many apples and peanuts which I had not intended to give her except upon the successful performance of some task."