640 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



there was no certainty that Nyanga might not meet some com- 

 panion and follow him without thinking any more of us. From 

 time to time we heard her calls, which the natives knew so well. 

 They call this species the king of monkeys, for they believe that 

 when its voice is heard all the monkeys in the wood keep silent. 



But Baba, the Senegalian, provoked that one of the monkeys 

 given him to take care of should have escaped, made every effort 

 to catch the runaway. He had climbed an enormous tree with a 

 trunk so large that it could not be scaled except by gymnastic 

 efforts of which the blacks alone, who are almost as agile as the 

 monkeys, are capable. He was away at the top, close against a 

 branch, motionless, and hardly distinguishable from it. He had 

 taken with him a light pole at the end of which was fixed a cord 

 with a slip knot, and he hoped that he could get near enough to 

 the monkey to take it in his snare. With a patience of which we 

 whites would be incapable, he waited for the favorable moment. 

 He had been there nearly three hours without moving, when all 

 at once we heard him crying out from the branches, " Nyanga is 

 caught ! " It was true. Baba had waited till the monkey in her 

 gambols had got upon a large branch that hung directly over the 

 lake, had urged her gradually to the slender extremities of the 

 bough ; and there the animal had been forced to let herself be 

 approached, for her only means of escape was to jump from a 

 height of forty or fifty metres into the lake on the bank of which 

 we were encamped. This adventure cost Nyanga the loss of all 

 her liberty. In order to prevent her escaping again she was shut 

 up like any common monkey in a cage, and was not let out from 

 it except when we were camped at a post. 



After this long lapse of about a month, which was required for 

 the return from these distant regions, Nyanga, with twenty com- 

 panions of various species which we had picked up on the way, 

 took the express to Paris, and entered the Museum of Natural 

 History, where she became the object of special attentions. 



M. Milne-Edwards, on examining the animal, recognized in it 

 a species still very rare, of which the British Museum has three 

 skins from the island of Fernando Po. Bennett made a new 

 species of it, which he describes as Cercopithecus pogonias. The 

 specimen we brought is therefore the first that has come to 

 Europe alive. Fortunately, I killed an adult male of this species 

 in my African hunts, so that the French galleries also possess a 

 stuffed specimen of it. 



The Cercopithecus pogonias is a type reaching the full dimen- 

 sions of the genus that is, adult individuals measure from about 

 forty-five to fifty centimetres in height. Their tail is very long, 

 reaching eighty centimetres. The skin is gray almost black 

 upon the back, passes with a lighter tint on the flanks, and is 



