NATURAL HISTORY.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 236, 12 March 1875, Page 3

NATURAL HISTORY.

A monkey which was permitted to run free had frequently seen the men servants in the great country kitchen take down a powderhorn that stood on the chimney-piece, and throw a few grains in the fire to make the maids scream, which they always did on such occasions. Pug waited his opportunity, and when all was still, he clambered up, got possession of the well-iilled powder-horn, perched himself gingerly on one of the horizontal wheels placed for the saucepans, right over the warm ashes of an almost extinct wood fire, screwed off the top of the horn, and reversed it over the grate. The explosion sent him halfway up the chimney. Before he was blown up he was a snug, trim, well-conditioned monkey, he came down a carbonate nigger in miniature. The weight with which he pitched upon the hot ashes, in the midst of the general flare-up, aroused him to a sense of his condition. He was missing for days. Hunger at last drove him forth and he sneaked into the house, looking scared and wicked; but like some great personage, he never got over his sudden elevation and fall. If ever Pug forgot himself, and was troublesome, you had only to take down a powder-horn in his presence, and li6 was off to his hole like a shot, screaming and chattering his jaws like a pair of castanets.