To the Editor of the "Norru-Cuina Datty News."
S1r,—How would you or any of your readers like to be confined day in and day out within four walls with no earthly prospect of anything else for the rest of your natural? And this in spite of never having committed the crime which might conceivably have rendered the imprisonment worth while.
I refer, Sir, to two little monkeys new housed in the new monkey house in Jessfield Park. There are about seven monkeys there, but two of them are evidently desperate characters for, in addition to being kept in solitary confinement, they are permitted none of the amelioratiang of monkey life—no tree to climb, no swing to exercise on, nothing to play with at all, nothing to destroy. Do, I beg, use your influence on behalf of these who cannot make themselves heard (or understood) and urge that all monkeys kept in confinement—an offence against nature, if ever there was one—should be provided with a swing, a tree, something from time to time to tear, something to destroy. They, like mere man, are happiest when they are destructive. Such a lack of understanding and knowledge of monkey life is shown, too, when no sort of privacy, no hiding place, no blanket that they can pull over their heads (anyone who has made pet ior companion of a monkey knows how they love to cover their heads with a blanket at times), no straw even to rummage among are given to relieve the unutterable boredom and loneliness patent on the pathetic little faces behind the wire netting.
Most of us, near relations though we be, have apparently no imagination to enable us to realize what loss of freedom means to these great little lovers of wild life. We, bouritl hand and feet by civilization's conventions, do not miss what we have never enjoyed. Most of us, too, have never seen monkeys under natural conditions.. I seek your aid then, Sir, knowing that at least you do not lack imagination, and beg to subscribe myself.
I am, etc.,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.