TWO RARE MONKEYS. 393 



ness of the whole dark-gray body, even of the under side and the 

 exposed surfaces of the hands and feet. On the head the hair is 

 prolonged and erected in a peculiar way to form a long, stiff tuft, 

 or rather mane, which extends down to the neck. Its habitat is in 

 Farther India (Siam) and the larger Sunda Islands (Java and Su- 

 matra). 



The most prominent members of the group of South African 

 short-thumbed apes is the guereza (Colobus guereza, Riipp). This 

 monkey is one of the most famous animals, and one of those 

 which are most fully and imaginatively described in all special 

 works and portrayed in plain and in fantastic styles ; so that 

 every owner of a natural history knows it by name, but nobody 

 has seen it living. We do no wrong to truth when we say that 

 the first guerezas which were seen living in the European public 

 were the three specimens which were carried in a drosky in Au- 

 gust, 1890, before our offices in the Berlin Zoological Gardens. A 

 Greek had brought them from Massawah to Berlin, but our privi- 

 lege of becoming acquainted with them is due chiefly to the dis- 

 interested intervention of Herr Menges, a much-traveled dealer 

 and the director of the Somali exhibitions. I paid a considerable 

 sum for them, and am not sorry for it, for, although none of these 

 specimens is living now, they made students, artists, and friends 

 of animals acquainted with one of the handsomest and most re- 

 markable creatures known, and gave them opportunity to make 

 the first correct pictures of it from life. The picture makes a more 

 detailed description of the coloring of the guereza unnecessary ; 

 and I will only say that the way in which the white appears, as in 

 a certain sense a border and trimming of the dark ground color, 

 varies somewhat and might probably afford a means of distinguish- 

 ing between the geographical varieties of a species that is dis- 

 tributed over the whole of interior Africa. Hans Meyer, the 

 hardy conqueror of Africa's giant mountain Kilima Njaro, found 

 in that region a form which he named caudatus, in which the 

 whole tail is white ; our specimens belong to a variety called occi- 

 dentalis in Rocheprune's monograph on the short-thumbed mon- 

 keys. A considerable number of species of monkeys of western 

 and central Africa are pictured and described in this special 

 work ; many of them, including the bear short-thumbed monkeys 

 (Colobus ursinus, Waterh.), look much like a guereza without a 

 side-mane; others, like the devil-monkey (Colobus satanas, Og.), 

 are described as black ; and still others are red. Of all these we 

 know little except concerning the skins and the skulls, for they 

 reach us living only exceptionally. I return to the guereza, the 

 handsomest and most interesting species. 



The trio of them which I got, all three young, perhaps half- 

 grown fellows, were distinguished by something pretty and pleas- 



