Chapter 14

CHAPTER V.THE DOG-SHAPED MONKEYS[25]—1.SEMNOPITHECUS—2.COLOBUS.

General Characteristics of the Monkeys of the Old World—Distinguished from the Apes by Length of the Hinder Limbs and presence of Tails—Divided into those with and those without Cheek-pouches—Use of the Cheek-pouches—The two Genera of Pouchless Monkeys—THESACREDMONKEYS, or Semnopitheci—Derivation of the Name—First Discovery—Ape Worship in India—General Description—Limited to Asia—THESIMPAI—Its Locality and Appearance—THEBUDENG—Hunted for their Fur—Its Colour and Appearance—THELONG-NOSEDMONKEY—Reason of the Name—Quaint Appearance of the Young—Anatomical Peculiarities—Their First Appearance in Europe—Description of the Nose—Peculiar Formation of the Stomach—Bezoars—THEHOONUMANMONKEY—The Sacred Monkey of the Hindoos—Legends about it—THEDOUCMONKEY—Its Appearance and Habitat—THEBLACK-LEGGEDDOUC—Anatomical Peculiarities—THECROWNEDMONKEY—THEREDMONKEY—THESUMATRAMONKEY—THEWHITE-BEARDEDMONKEY—Found in Ceylon—Its Intelligence—THEGREATWANDEROO—Other Ceylonese Monkeys—THEGENUSCOLOBUS, or Thumbless Monkeys—Description of the Hand and Wrist—Different Varieties—COLOBUSVERUS—COLOBUSGUEREZA—Their Habitat and Peculiarities—Fossil Semnopitheci

THEApes which have formed the subject of the previous chapters, and which, from their greater or less resemblance to man, have been called theAnthropomorpha, have long arms, short legs, and no tails. The great length of the fore limb distinguishes them not only from man, but also from all the other Quadrumana, and so does the relative shortness of the hinder limbs. The length of limb is thus sufficient to afford data for classifying the Quadrumana of the Old World in two great groups, of which the Anthropomorpha form the first, and the rest of the Monkeys the second. In these the fore limb is invariably theshortest, and the hinder one thelongest; so that there is exactly the reverse condition of that observed in the great Apes. With regard to the tail question, it may be stated that, whilst many species have very long tails, others have them of moderate length, and a few have none.

The Monkeys of this second group, or the Cynomorpha, all of which live in the Old World, have a thin division (septum) between the nostrils, whose openings look downwards, or downwards and outwards. They are Catarhine Quadrumana (seepage 3), and many have cheek-pouches, but not all, whilst all have the peculiar pads, more or less brightly coloured, which are placed where the animal sits, or on the swelling of the haunch-bone. All these Old World Monkeys have the same number of teeth as the Apes already described, and arranged in the same manner, and most have a laryngeal or air pouch; but there is great diversity in their size, shape, and in the method of progression of the body and shape of the head, and also in the construction of the brain and internal organs. Moreover, the arrangement of the muscles and of the back-bone differs.

The presence or absence of the cheek-pouches, the peculiarity in the shape of the teeth, the shape of the body and limbs, and the method of moving along, are all matters of importance to the zoologist, for by them he is enabled to arrange these Monkeys in genera and species, so as to give the naturalist the proper name of the kind whose habits he may be studying. Moreover, the comparative anatomist, in examining the insides of these creatures, and explaining their peculiarities of internal construction, is able to account for many habits and the presence of many structures, as well as to assist the zoologist. For, a classification, to be good for anything, must be more than skin deep, and must depend upon the differences in those parts which are not readily changed by habits or peculiar methods of life.

The Monkeys of the Old World, excluding the great Apes already described, and including alone those with long hind limbs, may be divided into those without cheek-pouches and those which have them; and those in the first division form the subject of this chapter. Cheek-pouches may be seen crammed with nuts in most of the Monkeys at the Zoological Gardens, and the appearance given to the face is as if the skin on each side of the lower part of it were distended. When there are no nuts thus stowed away, the cheeks do not present a swollen or unusual appearance. The Monkey does not force nuts outside its jaws and between them and the cheeks so as to simply distendthem, but it presses its food into what look like some folds in the cheek. These unfold, and form a bag or pouch on each side of the face, and the animal can eat, scream, and scold with the pouches full, and without their contents coming by chance into the mouth. The gift of a cheek-pouch is of great importance to a Monkey; it is a stowaway for his food, which may have to be carried some distance before it can be eaten. And it must be remembered, that not only have the Monkeys very indefinite notions ofmeum et tuum, but that they are surrounded by dangers from many other animals; they are communists, and their motto isla propriété c’est le vol; and, on the other hand, the great beasts of the earth, whose stealing is less thought of, because it is done with great violence, openly, and on a large scale, put down the Monkeys whenever they have the chance. But Nature, ever a considerate mother, whilst she is exceedingly economical, and does not allow any structures to be unused or wasted without gradually abolishing them, often gives animals which are defective in some things very important compensation.

FACE OF THE BLACK-CRESTED MONKEY.

The pouchless Monkeys are evidently at a disadvantage; but by this system of compensation they have very peculiar stomachs, in which they can stow away quite as much food before more is absolutely wanted as their pouched friends can. The nature of this stomach will be noticed further on; and it isonly necessary to observe that it is not in existence in the cheek-pouched division at all. The cheeks of the Monkeys with the peculiar stomach, on the other hand, are not pouched, but there is just the vestige of a fold or two, which, although of no use, still remains as an evidence of their ancestry—for, doubtless, these are descended from those with pouches. The great Anthropomorphous Apes have no cheek-pouches, neither have the American Monkeys; and, for reasons which will be noticed in treating of these last, they have not the complicated stomach of the Old World pouchless group.

The pouchless division of Monkeys with complicated stomachs, and which, of course, have long hind limbs, comprehends two genera—the genus Semnopithecus, and the genus Colobus.

The Semnopitheci, or the Sacred Apes—from σεμνός (sacred), and πίθηκος (an Ape)—were probably known to the Greeks who invaded India under Alexander the Great; and Ctesias, a Greek writer, who was taken prisoner by Artaxerxes of Persia, at the battle of Cunaxa, some 400 yearsB.C., studied them. He was kept for seventeen years at the court of that monarch, and made notes on most subjects, and also on the natural history of Persia and India. On his return to Athens he gave the world the results of his observation in a book, and in it he treats of two Apes, one of which was smaller than the other, and had a very long tail. This was a Semnopithecus, for the genus is especially Asiatic; but the ancients did not discriminate between the long-tailed Apes of Africa and those of Asia, but called both Cercopithecus—from κέρκος (a tail), and πίθηκος (Ape). At the present time the word Cercopithecus is restricted to the kinds which live in Africa. These differ in their internal construction from the Asiatic varieties.

During the rise of the religion of Brahma, the contemplation of the Creator became singularly mixed up with the worship of the created, and many animals became sacred. Hence, when one of those wandering restless spirits, Gasparo Balbi by name, started in 1570 from the town of Venice, where he was a jeweller, to reach the Indies, and came to the end of his journey, he saw many a long-tailed Ape worshipped and petted by his customers. He wandered amidst many a danger—but the people were honest then—and reached Aleppo. Then he went by caravan to Bagdad, and got to Old Babylon—by the way, “a place perilous for robbers and lions.” Reaching Bagdad, he embarked for Balsora, and reached that place after escaping whirlpools and hot and deadly winds. Thence he went to the cities of St. Thomas, by the Seven Pagodas, in Southern India. Leaving there, and much troubled by tigers, he crossed the Ganges and got into Pegu on the Irawady. He admired the Pagodas, or as they are there called, “the Varelles of the gods,” and says that about them are found “tyed many Apes of that kind which resemble Mountain Cats, which were called Monkeys; they keep them very carefully, holding them to be creatures beloved of God, because they have their hands and feet like human creatures, and therefore the woods are full of them, for they never take any except for their Varelles and statues.” This regard for the Long-tailed Monkey has lasted, and probably is only now diminishing under the influence of the rationalistic philosophy of the wicked Europeans, who will not see anything holy in an Ape. Certain it is that the follies of Ape-worship were carried on to a wonderful extent, and that these creatures have been preserved to the serious detriment of crops, comfort, and temper.

The regard of the natives for them was, and probably is still, sincere, and their boldness—the result of immunity from persecution—was discovered very early in the English occupation of India; for Tavernier tells a story of an English “President,” who asked him to shoot some Monkeys, which were amusingly audacious by the river side. He complied, and a female fell dead with her young clinging to her. This so enraged the Monkeys that sixty of them descended at once, and had it not been for the serving-men, and the carriage being shut up, they would have strangled the “President.” They followed the carriage for many miles. Then we are told about Indian princes spending fortunes on the marriage-feasts of Apes; and of cultivators of the soil being scared away and subjected to all sorts of rapine by these holy creatures. All this goes to prove that generations of Hindoos have believed in the sacred character of the Monkey, and have placed him in their mythology.

So Fred. Cuvier, when he wanted a name, termed them Sacred Apes, orSemnoptheci. They have been called Slow Apes, but this is quite a misnomer, for when awake, and not tired, they are as full of fun, activity, and play, but not as full of malice, as the others.

Wallace, in his charming book of travels in the great Islands of Sumatra and Borneo, thus noticed how full of life they are:—“In Sumatra, Monkeys are very abundant, and at Lubo Raman they used to frequent the trees which overhang the guard-house, and gave me a fine opportunity of observing their gambols. Two species of Semnopithecus were most plentiful—Monkeys of a slender form, with very long tails. Not being much shot at, they are rather bold, and remain quite unconcerned when natives alone are present; but when I came out to look at them, they would stare for a minute or two, and then make off. They take tremendous leaps from the branches of one tree to those of another a little lower. It is very amusing when one strong leader takes a bold jump, to see the others following with more or less trepidation; and it often happens that one or two of the last seem quite unable to make up their minds to leap till the rest are disappearing, when, as if in desperation at being left behind, they would leap as far as they could, and often come crashing down into the underwood.”

The Semnopitheci may be described as Monkeys with hind limbs long, and larger than the fore limbs, with slender bodies, usually highest at the tail, and round heads, and with not very prominent faces, and very long tails. They have callous pads on the haunch-bones, and in some there are slight folds inside the cheeks, but no pouches. The hands have thumbs, and the last tooth of the lower jaw (the third molar) has a prominent heel to it, or cusp, besides four others. They are of all sizes, and the largest are bigger than a Pointer Dog; but they are all slightly made, and their long bodies, thin as a rule, are larger in the stomach than in the chest. Their tails, which hang down and are not curled up, distinguish them pretty readily.

The Monkey which shows the peculiarities of the genusSemnopithecusmore than others is, perhaps,

It was noticed and described by Sir Stamford Raffles as a native of Sumatra, where it is frequently seen in the neighbourhood of Bencoolen. It has a long and slender body, very long hind-legs, and the tail end is higher than the shoulders in walking. The fore-legs are short, and the tail is very long, and exceeds thirty inches in length, and the head is small and wonderfully straight in the forehead and face.

The colours of this Simpai are very different to those of the great Apes already mentioned. Here variety of colour replaces the sameness of the tints of the large Anthropomorpha. First, there is a long crest of black hair on the top of the head, which passes slightly round the face close. On the cheeks there is a tuft of fawn-coloured hairs, which graduate into white. The forehead is of a light fawn-colour, and the face is naked, slightly wrinkled, and of a blue tint. The under parts of the body are very white, and on the back and neck the colour is bright yellow and red. The palms and soles are black, the thumbs are small, and the callosities are large.

This is, as the name implies, a black Monkey. It is intensely black, except underneath, and at the root of the tail, where there is a grey tint. The paws are long, delicate, and silky, and become slightly grey on the head and back with old age. Like most black things, it leads a troubled life, being chased and hunted, not, however, in this instance so much for amusement as for the pretty black fur. They live in great troops, in the Javanese forests, and sometimes fifty or more individuals associate together. They make rude nests in trees, and are extremely timid, making off with great haste if they are disturbed. A long series of generations has been chased and killed by the natives of Java, and therefore the present Negro Monkeys are exceedingly shy, and bolt from the face of man at once. And yet, although thus timid and anxious to get out of the way, they have the reputation of being dangerous, and really unwittingly they may be so. On the approach of men they utter loud screams, and scamper off amongst the trees, helter-skelter. Now in doing this, they break dead branches off, and sometimes a large fruit or nut comes tumbling down some score or two of feet. These are supposed to be thrown by the Monkeys, but such is not the case. Having this bad character, the “Negroes” are cudgelled with sticks, and killed in numbers very cruelly.Their pretty fur is much prized, and the chiefs of the country arrange the hunting parties, treating the Monkeys really as beasts of the field. The skins are prepared by a simple process which the natives have learned from Europeans; and they conduct it with great skill. It affords a fur of a jet-black colour, covered with long silky hairs, which is used by the natives and Europeans there in ornamenting riding saddlery and in military decorations.

When young, they are of a brown or reddish tint, and thin grey tints appear preceding the intense black; they then eat buds and shoots and tender leaves, but in adult age they are fruit consumers. When in captivity they are sullen and morose, and they will remain sulky for many months. This the natives know, and therefore they never try to tame them, or to have them in their houses. In their shape they resemble the last Monkey described, and their hind limbs are very long, their haunches being high.

NEGRO MONKEY.

They are rather more than two feet long in the body, and the neck appears short; both shoulders and chest are short and largely made. The tail is as long as the body and head, and is often slightly tufted at the end. A mop of hair surrounds the face, and the hairs are long and closely pressed, and quite conceal the forehead. The nose is peculiar, for the bones of it are ridged, as it were, and the skin is drawn tight over the open nostril (nares), so that there is no soft nose. A very considerable space exists between the nostrils and the mouth, and the lips are small and thin.

Of all the remarkable oddities of Nature amongst the many-shaped Monkeys, the Long-nosed or Proboscis-carrier stands pre-eminent. In fact, there is nothing in human or ape nature like the face of one particular Long-tailed Semnopithecus from Borneo. Monkeys have flat noses as a rule, some have a ridge and a little fleshy mass in which the nostrils end; others, like the Baboon, have dog-like noses, and the Americans have wide noses, the nostrils opening well at the sides. In man there is the Roman nose, the pug, the straight, the flat, the broken, the long with a large end, and the short with a turn up, but the Nasalis Monkey stands alone amongst the Primates with a nose of vast proportions, which projects far in advance of the mouth, and whose nostrils open underneath. It grows with age, and commences as a small “turn up,” which still is more fleshy and longer than the nose of any Monkey. The newly-born Nose Monkey is a most extraordinary object, reminding the critical eye of many youths of weak constitution and defective brains. Its hair is wonderfully parted down the middle, and brushed by Dame Nature down the sides of the head and a little backwards; the whiskers take the latter direction, and the ears stand out just behind them. It has drooping eyelids, a longishupper lip, with just a little sign of coming hair, and then there is the funny nose, the upper part like a boy’s, but the end seems to have been pulled out and turned up, so that the nostrils are quite at the tip. The face has a tinge of blue about it, and the animal, even when old enough to be sitting on a tree, looks sad and melancholy.

They grow to the size of a large Pointer Dog, and are powerful animals, assembling in troops, and playing and associating probably with the Orangs. Stuffed specimens of the Proboscis Monkey are usually simple caricatures, and by no means good ones, for they do not give one-half of the curious appearance of the face. In nature, and in drawings taken shortly after death, the first thing that strikes one is the flat top to the head, and the red hair there, starting from the top of the crown, and radiating in all directions, and coming as a very sharp line straight over the eyebrows, and cutting the forehead very short. Then the prodigious nose, stuck out some inches in front of the mouth, is, with the rest of the face, naked, and of a reddish-brown flesh-colour. The eyes are wide apart and open, and are of a hazel colour. The whiskers clasp the face, as it were, and are brushed back, and join the hair of the neck, whilst the little beard sticks out like a goat’s. The mouth is wide, and the chin recedes. It is a long-bodied creature, and there is a great bend outwards in the back when it squats on its haunches. There is a good-sized chest, there are long arms, still longer legs, and a great tail. The prevailing colour of the back and shoulders is the red or dark-red brown of the head hair, whilst the rest of the body is of a lighter tint, the tail and limbs especially. The thumb of the hand is small, and barely reaches as far as the first finger-joint, but the toe-thumb is large, widely set from the foot, and the skin-fold comes far down it, as also does a web between the toes, the third of which is the longest.

LONG-NOSED MONKEY.

The skull of this Monkey greatly resembles that of the other Semnopitheci. The face part is smaller in comparison with that of the great Apes, but then it is not much larger than the brain case. There is a faint ridge at the side, and the usual one from one ear to the other exists. The front of the face on each side of the opening for the nose is rather larger and more prominent than insome other kinds, but there are no evidences of the existence of the great fleshy and gristly mass which is stuck on in front in life. This swelling of the front of the face in the skull slightly reminds us of a greater one which characterises the Dog-faced Baboons, and, moreover, the similarity is increased by the fact that the upper eye (canine) tooth presses the first tooth behind the lower eye tooth backwards. These little peculiarities are inherited gifts, for the Nasalis and the Baboon probably came from a common ancestor. Perhaps the great fleshy nose of the Semnopithecus Nasalis is a relic of the long face of the ancient Baboon. Shorten the bones of the Baboon’s nose, and leave the soft parts, and there would be left something like the queer features of the Monkey now under consideration.

YOUNG LONG-NOSED MONKEY.

One must be struck with the long back-bone of this Monkey, its single backward bend, and the long way the ribs seem from the hips; making it like the Gibbons, and very unlike the other great Apes, which have their last ribs close to their hips. The tail is very long, and starts well up the back, that is to say, its origin at the end of the sacrum bone is some distance from the haunches, on which the creature sits. These last are rounded so as to afford comfortable rest, especially as they are covered by the callosities or pads. The feet are long from the metatarsal bones, and the great toe-thumb is accompanied by a long, strong, backward-projecting, and curved-up heel-bone.

The Dyaks call this Monkey the Kaha, for this is the sound which they make when in companies in the woods by the side of the swamps and jungles. There they live a restless life at sunrise and sunset, being quieter in the heat of the day, and crying out at each other. They have fine voices, thanks to their strength, and perhaps to the air sac in their neck, which may render oral sounds more resonant. They are active creatures, and bound from tree to tree, clearing from fifteen to twenty feet with ease.

Being very like extremely ugly humanity, the Dyaks consider them as degraded men, and they give an excellent reason for their human ancestors having left their habits and dwellings. They did not like to pay taxes, so they took to the woods!

It is said that when the ambassadors of Tippoo Saib came to Paris to urge the French to take up his cause against the British in India, they were immensely delighted with the Monkeys with the great noses which were preserved and stuffed in the museum, acknowledging them as compatriots. But as a matter of fact, specimens of this Monkey never had been and never could have been seen by these men, for it does not inhabit the peninsula of India. But it is a fact that when some specimens came over to Paris, preserved in spirits, they excited a wonderful commotion amongst the savans. Broderip was present, and saw one drawn forth, “looking like one of those horrible female fiends sometimes pictured in old woodcuts.

“Not uglier follow the night hag.”

A celebrated French naturalist, who was present at the opening of the casket which contained this zoological jewel, was in raptures, and as the bust emerged he uttered an exclamation significatory of her paternity. We looked in vain for the young imps, which had probably escaped when their poor barrelled-up mother fell. It must be startling to look round in the wilderness of Borneo and behold one of these horrible visages peering, Zamiel-like, from behind the trunk of some dark tree! The impression left on the mind, however, is rather of the comical than of the terrible in its nature afterseeing these creatures; but one is obliged to admit that those who see a use in everything may be puzzled to account for this superfluity of nose, for this greatest of all noses does not appear to be like that of the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, “all the better to smell with.”

But some philosophy may be got out of this nose, and it tends to humiliate the pretensions of those anatomists who can restore an animal if they can only get hold of a bone or two.

This nose is an anatomical excrescence: cut it off, and no bones are cut through; dissect the skull, and then no one could tell that there ever had been such a feature attached to it. The dry bones show no sign of what was during life, and the skull resembles those of the other Semnopitheci. So that animals with the same shaped bones may have very different coverings, and no one could restore the nose of this creature out of his inward consciousness any more than he could imagine, from the back-bones of the animals, that camels and dromedaries have humps thereon.

The animal has a huge air sac, which appears to be single, and to enter the windpipe above the larynx cartilage, and between it and the bone of the tongue. It opens into the membrane which connects these structures (the thyroid membrane) on the left side, and the opening can be closed by the contraction of the muscles which reach from the tongue-bone (os hyoides) to the larynx cartilage (thyroid cartilage—the thyro-hyoid muscles).

STOMACH OF THE LONG-NOSED MONKEY.

But the most interesting part of the internal construction of Nasalis is the great stomach, which does not consist of a simple bag, with an opening for the food to enter from the gullet and œsophagus or food pipe, and with another at the opposite end to carry the digested food to the intestines, but is complex, there being three bags united together. The first two of these bags are for the storage and reception of food, and the other, which ends in the canal leading to the intestines, is for its digestion. This compound stomach is peculiar to the Semnopitheci and the Colobi amongst the Monkeys. It exists in the most perfect form in the animals which chew the cud or ruminate, such as oxen. It is noticed also, more or less, in the Cetacea, or Whale tribe, in the Sloths, in the Cony, or Hyrax, in the fruit-eating Bats of the genus Pteropus, and finally in some Kangaroo-like animals. It is possible that the Semnopitheci may bring back more food into the mouth and chew it again, or the first two expansions of the stomach may be really simple receptacles and storehouses grown in the place of the cheek-pouches; or the condition may be a reversion, or going back, to the condition of some remote ancestor.

The large intestine is also very bulged out here and there, and this and the large stomach occupy much space in the cavity of the belly, compressing the bowels within smaller bounds than in the larger Monkeys.

Bezoars are found in the sacs of the stomach of the different kinds of Semnopitheci, and were and may be still much prized. They are potent charms and remedies against poisons, and are supposed to possess extraordinary virtues. The name comes from the Persian, writes the learned author of the article “Bezoars,” in the “Penny Cyclopædia”—Pêd-zahr, expelling poison, the expeller of poison. “Pêd” is relieving and curing, and “Zahr” is poison. Bezoars are sometimes found in various parts, but chiefly in the stomachs of land animals. They are either natural or artificial, and as they are rare, they are worth many times their weight in gold. Those which were most esteemed in Europe came from the East, and were the earliest used. The most highly prized came from the stomachs of the wild goat of Persia, and they were called by way of eminence,Lapis Bezoar Orientalis, and all such things which were supposed to be antidotes were calledBezoardic. They are still esteemed in the East, but have long fallen into disuse in Europe, the chemist and the naturalist having abolished their value by exposing their real nature. They are the round hard balls which are found in the stomachs of many animals, and which consist of hair licked off and swallowed, and food of every clinging nature cemented together by mucus. They get too large to pass out of the stomach, either by vomiting or by going through the small canal into the intestine, and therefore become round by being rolled about, and often very great. Very large ones are discovered in some horses which are found at work near flourand bran mills. The Americans got theirs from the Llama, and they consisted principally of phosphate of lime. Perhaps the earliest of all physics was bezoardic, and it consisted of the heart and liver of vipers, pounded up for the benefit of the invalid. Fortunately, bezoars disappeared from the list of useful drugs years ago, with the crabs’-claws, oyster-shells, powdered centipedes, and other medical delicacies with which our forefathers were drenched in good faith andsecundum artem.

SUMATRA MONKEY. (From Temminck.)

This is the most sacred of the sacred Monkeys of the Hindoos, and when full-grown, measures four feet and a half in length, and the tail is considerably longer than the body. An ashy-grey tint distinguishes the upper part of the body, and it is darkest on the tail, which is of equal thickness throughout. The rest of the body is of a dingy yellow colour, or rusty brown, and the arms, hands, and feet are dusky black. The long face is blackish; and above the eyebrows is a line of long stiff projecting black hairs. A greyish-white beard passes round the face, and extends upwards, and isthicker in front of the ears, which are long and prominent and black. Finally, this face has a few hairs by way of a beard beneath the chin, which projects.

A long-legged, active creature is the Entellus. It associates in great troops, and they keep up a constant noise and quarrel. Those that abound—thanks to the belief in their semi-divinity by the Hindoos—near towns and plantations are certainly more sharp, clever, and impudent than their less fortunate fellows. They watch and steal with impunity and ability, and are amusing when young, but savage and disagreeable when old. The young differ much in shape from the old adults, and their limbs seem very disproportioned at first. They have a staid look about them, and a tranquil eye, and the forehead is broad and high, the muzzle only slightly prominent, and the brain-case large. But with age this alters; the tints of the body get darker, the body larger, the muzzle elongates, and the forehead appears to contract, and to be no longer an object of human resemblance. The disposition changes also, for the tame and amusing young learn a number of tricks and are full of fun; but this is succeeded by a look and behaviour of distrust and fierceness.

DOUC.

The Entellus Monkey is not found from Cape Comorin to the Himalayan Mountains, as is usually asserted; and Captain Hutton has shown that it is “entirely and absolutely restricted, within narrow limits, to the hot tropical plains of the north-western Gangetic provinces, where, from the degree of protection which its imputed ‘odour of sanctity’ is so well calculated to cast around it, as well as from the numbers in which it frequently occurs, it becomes a perfect nuisance in those parts of the country where the superstitious veneration for it most strongly prevails. In many places where the natives, from religious motives, are in the habit of feeding and protecting them, the roofs of the village huts are at certain hours of the day literally crowded with them, and the depredations committed in grain shops, gardens, and among neighbouring crops, are most miscreant-like.” The Entellus has been purposely introduced elsewhere, but is naturally confined to the right banks of the Ganges and Hooghly. They will not cross water of their own accord, and there appears to be a notion in the mindsof the Hindoos that if there are males on one side and females on the other bank of the river, and plenty of boats between, the sexes will never mix, but that the males have great fights together. This is, however, one of the many fictions of those races who rarely study Nature. Some of these Monkeys were introduced to Kishunghur, in Lower Bengal, across the rivers, by devotees, and the offspring of one pair increased to such an extent as to become a perfect nuisance, so that in 1867 a large number of the native community presented a petition, praying that measures might be taken by the municipality to destroy some of the too numerous Monkeys that infested the station, causing fearful havoc among the fruit and grain. An order was issued, and 500 were killed. “There must be many thousands,” wrote a correspondent of theDelhi Gazette. This act was soon succeeded by another petition from a different section of the native population for the cancelment of the order to kill what they called their long deceased ancestors. The Entellus is not found in Africa, nor amongst the Himalayas; neither does it migrate from the upper to the lower districts of Bengal at special seasons. The Himalayan Semnopitheci are the Langoor and another—theSemnopithecus pileatusandSemnopithecus barbei.

It was stated formerly that the Entellus could be seen on Simla all the year through; but when the snow falls during the winter it seeks a warmer climate in the depths of the Khuds, returning again to the heights as it melts away. They may be seen, however, on a fine sunshiny day, even with the snow on the ground, leaping from tree to tree up and down a hill in Simla, which is at about an elevation of 8,115 feet. All this is a mistake; and it is the Langoor, not the Hoonuman, or Entellus, which does all this. It is the Langoor Monkey which Dr. Royle saw at an elevation of 9,000 feet during the summer months, and which Captain Hutton observed when on Hatu mountain, close to Simla, at an elevation of 10,650 feet, and at Simla during winter with snow four or five inches deep, and frost at night.

Whether the Entellus is found in the Deccan, and to the south, appears to be matter of doubt but probably the long-tailed Monkeys, seen in multitudes near houses or only in the forests, belong to a Semnopithecus closely allied in shape and ornamentation to it. One, theSemnopithecus Johnii, rarely leaves the forest lands, and is seen in Malabar.

Evidently the natives do not discriminate between the species and the varieties of it, as we may. They consider all of them possibly to be endowed with the mind of an ancestor, and that it may be their lot to have their soul placed within the body of some Monkey or other.

They attribute to the Hoonuman the stealing of the delicious fruit the mango, and its introduction into Hindostan; but the legend asserts that the hero Ape who did this, stole the fruit from the garden of a giant, who lived in Ceylon, and that afterwards he resolved to set fire to Ceylon, and destroy his enemies by a lighted tar-barrel tied to his tail; but he burnt his hands and feet black, and they remain so to the present day. Unfortunately for the truth of this legend, the Entellus never was in Ceylon.

The Entellus is occasionally to be seen in the Zoological Gardens of London, but it is a very delicate creature. It likes quiet play and some solemn stillness, and therefore it is not kept with the vivacious African Monkeys, but with the Long-tailed Americans.

One of the most striking of the Semnopitheci is wonderfully like some of the Indians of the far west of America in their war-paint, so far as the head is concerned. This is

Its colour is brown, becoming very dark and almost black on the back, loins, and outsides of the thighs, and around the fore-arms and lower leg. The muzzle is rather prominent, and there is a white patch over the nose on the forehead. The crest of long hair sticks up like that of a Cockatoo, and is rather brushed backwards, whilst a whisker, which is continuous with it, comes forward and hides the cheeks.

All the proportions of the limbs are those of the genus, and the tail, which hangs down, is long and slender. It comes from Borneo.

This is an active little Monkey, and a great tree climber; it greatly resembles the last in shape, but it has a shorter muzzle, and the whole body is a bright reddish-brown, the face being blue and naked, the eyes hazel. A crest of hair sticks up on the top of the head, and the bulk of it points backwards, whilst the front comes over the forehead like thatch, and the whiskers are brushed outwards. It is called Kalassi in Borneo.

This diversity of colouring, which must astonish every one who has seen Temminck’s beautiful plates of the Semnopitheci, must be received cautiously as a proof of the different colours meaning different kinds. For in Semnopithecus chrysomeles the male is dark brown, and only lighter in tint underneath, whilst the female is light brown, with a splash or two of black on the front legs. They both have blue faces. In this instance the female and the male might have been called by different names. The same thing occurs in the Sumatran Monkey, in which the female is light brown and the male is a most extraordinary-looking yellow. His hair seems brushed back most violently, the blue face is very short and straight; he has a reddish chin, a white throat, inside of arms, and legs, and belly, and under part of tail, but all the rest is black, with a shade of lighter tint behind the ears and on the back.

All these are very curious-looking when young, for then the head appears too big for the body, and the stomach is always large; moreover, the little Proboscis Monkey looks like a boy with his hair parted down the front, and who has a blue face and a tail.

This Monkey is perhaps the most gaily clad of all this group, and in this departs in a most marked manner from the dull sameness of the fur of the Apes already described in the former chapters. Not only is the long hair very different in colour in several parts of the body, but the hairs themselves are variegated, having bands of various tints upon them, differing thus from the whole-coloured hairs of the great Apes.

The animal has the usual shape of the Semnopitheci; but the whiskers brushed back, as they appear to be, make the naked and orange-coloured face look broad. These whiskers are long, and are of glossy whiteness, and above they join the hair of the forehead, which is black in front, gradually becoming grizzled grey. This is the tint of the head, and of the back of the neck and back. The thighs, fingers, and toes are black, the legs and ankles are bright red, fore-arms, throat, and underneath the legs, the buttocks, and the tail are pure white, and the white throat is surrounded by a more or less complete circle of bright red. They live in the woods of Cochin China, and have been met with not far from the coast. They assemble in troops, but appear to be good-tempered and easily frightened, and this appears to be all that is known of their nature. But they yielded to the researches of the anatomist the same internal arrangement of the cavities of the stomach which has been noticed in describing the Long-nosed Monkey.

The forests on the banks of the Me-kong, near Saigon in Cochin China, are tenanted by a fine Douc which, instead of having the red legs of the true Douc (Semnopithecus nemæus), has them of a black colour from the root of the tail to the tips of the toes. Moreover, in this animal the fore legs are greyish-black, dotted with white, whilst those of the other Douc are whitish. Of course these distinctions are not sufficient to separate these Doucs specifically, and they must be considered races or local varieties, the black-footed one living more to the south than the other. If this be correct, and it must be on the principle that a negro and a white man are only races of the genus Homo, and that a black and a white rabbit are of the same kind, colour is a point of little importance.

The Black-legged Douc has its face almost naked, and surmounted by a band of hairs on the forehead. These stand out, and are directed forwards. In the other Douc these hairs, of a less blacktint, are brushed, as it were, backwards. Now, an attempt has been made by Geoffroy St. Hilaire to arrange the kinds of Semnopitheci by the direction and peculiarities of their head-dresses, and if this plan were carried out the true Douc would be in one section—that of those with the hair brushed back—and the black-legged one, which is only a variety, and not a separate species, would have to be placed in another. Hence, this plan is worthless.

This Douc has a very human face and a small head, a large chest, a thin abdomen, very long hind-legs and tail, and short fore-legs.

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