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Cornugaya Directory 01
Page 10
The Gibbons appear to be naturally very gentle, but there is very good
evidence that they will bite severely when irritated, a female
_Hylobates agilis_ having so severely lacerated one man with her long
canines that he died; while she had injured others so much that, by
way of precaution, these formidable teeth had been filed down; but if
threatened she would still turn on her keeper. The Gibbons eat
insects, but appear generally to avoid animal food. A Siamang,
however, was seen by Mr. Bennett to seize and devour greedily a live
lizard. They commonly drink by dipping their fingers in the liquid and
then licking them. It is asserted that they sleep in a sitting
posture.
One evening she was in difficulties about the quarantine, which was
enforced that year on the Italian frontier. The local doctor had
gone down that morning to see the Italian doctor and arrange some
details. "Then, perhaps, my dear," she said to her husband, "he is
the quarantine." "No, my love," replied her husband. "The
quarantine is not a person, it is a place where they put people";
but she would not be comforted, and suspected the quarantine as an
enemy that might at any moment pounce out upon her and her parrots.
So a lady told me once that she had been in like trouble about the
anthem. She read in her prayer-book that in choirs and places where
they sing "here followeth the anthem," yet the person with this most
mysteriously sounding name never did follow. They had a choir, and
no one could say the church was not a place where they sang, for
they did sing--both chants and hymns. Why, then, this persistent
slackness on the part of the anthem, who at this juncture should
follow her papa, the rector, into the reading-desk? No doubt he
would come some day, and then what would he be like? Fair or dark?
Tall or short? Would he be bald and wear spectacles like papa, or
would he be young and good-looking? Anyhow, there was something
wrong, for it was announced that he would follow, and he never did
follow; therefore there was no knowing what he might not do next.
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