Sketches from Formosa.

emphasize my enquiry,
MONKEY CUTLETS FOR DINNER 133
but he ran off into the wattle-
and-dab cooking hut, and passed quickly through the
back door into Cimmerian darkness. Whilst I was
swithering for a moment what to do, he came back again
carrying the spread-out hide and the gruesome head of an
old monkey ; adding the explanation that, as our Gu-
khun-soa brethren knew we were coming, they had formed
a party to go and hunt for venison, but that God had
exceeded their expectation by enabling them to capture
this big monkey. And yet, very little discernment was
needed to see that it was nothing more nor less than a
case of one for us and three for themselves ;
for native
medicine-sellers are always willing to give exorbitant
prices for monkeys' bones. The noticeable thing was
that only a few days before I had been reading Darwin's
Origin of Species, in which that learned scientist seems to
make out some sort of a close relationship between human
beings and those creatures which were now in evidence
upon our dining- table.