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 manoeuvres, 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."