HYENAS, MONKEYS, AND PIGS 



men also thought that they saw the monkeys drink in this 

 way. Although I am not absolutely sure that they actually 

 drank out of the hands, if they did so, it was very much 

 like the way in which the sons of the forest, the wild 

 Wandorobo, generally drink. I had on this trip not shot 

 any colobus monkeys as yet, but it is needless to say that it 

 was impossible for me to disturb the peace and apparent 

 joy of the company. After about half an hour of dancing 

 around, jumping on each others' backs, and performing 

 some quite remarkable equilibristic feats, the band sud- 

 denly disappeared among the crowns of the mighty trees. 



The skin of the colobus monkey is beautifully marked, 

 being, as a rule, perfectly black on the greater part of the 

 body, with white sides of the face, large white fields, with 

 much longer hair on the flanks, and with a long, white, 

 and very bushy tail. Another characteristic of these mon- 

 keys is that they entirely lack the thumb on their hands, 

 and are, therefore, often called by the zoologists the 

 " thumbless monkeys." It may here be remarked that 

 there is a strange difference between the hair of this 

 species of monkeys and that of all the rest of the family. 

 Whereas each individual hair of the ordinary monkey 

 distinctly shows different shades of color, those of the 

 colobus monkeys are uniformly white or black. 



On my last trip to Mt. Kenia my attention was one day 

 called by a Wandorobo guide to an absolutely white colo- 

 bus. I could not at first believe his story, but after a few 

 minutes' search of the trees I actually found, among a 

 troop of ordinary colobus monkeys, a very large specimen, 

 which was absolutely snow-white, without a speck of black 

 anywhere on its body or tail. This particular animal 



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