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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



should say that monkeys probably make 

 better mothers than very many of the 

 natives we saw in Africa. 



One incident that we witnessed in 

 connection with the Colohus monkeys is 

 hard to understand. We were studying 

 them at Kijabi for a group for the 



J. T. with her "cliaiiilifrlain" and full regalia. 

 This picture with AUie, her "nurse," as we al- 

 ways called him, was taken immediately "on the 

 equator" near Eldama Ravine in British East 

 Africa. She rode on Allie's shoulder or head in 

 our travels from camp to camp and was usually 

 fed by him, but. as she was accustomed to a life 

 on the forest-covered banks of streams, the glare 

 of the sun made her sick, wherefore the um- 

 brella. In going about their own business in 

 their own way the guenon monkeys (Lasio- 

 pyga^, to which genus J. T. belonged, are very 

 wiry and agile. They travel through the for- 

 ests, swinging from branch to branch, and even 

 make long and warlike excursions into distant 

 parts, but the strange monotony of human travel 

 was very fatiguing to .J. T. 



Field ]\Iuseum, and shot some of them 

 for specimens to mount. When one 

 of the young monkeys was wounded and 

 fell to the ground, an older monkey 

 came down out of the tree and killed 

 the wounded one, and then made its 

 escape. 



The baboons are amusingly human in 

 taking care of their babies — as I dis- 

 covered during a two weeks' stay we 

 made on the Lucania Hills. These hills 

 nre alive with baboons, hundreds and 

 1 1 undreds of them in troops or families, 

 — one family used to come every night 

 to sleep in a tree just back of our camp. 

 The mothers with the young monkeys 

 on their backs climbed the rocks; even 

 though the wall seemed absolutely per- 

 ]iendicular, these baboon mothers would 

 find a way up. The big old male baboon, 

 weighing at least seventy-five pounds, 

 would come down perhaps fifty yards 

 nearer our tent than the mothers, who 

 stayed with the babies on the rocks 

 above. Here he would sit on scout 

 duty, his chin propped on his hand, 

 where he could see over the whole coun- 

 try. 



Meanwhile, the mothers prepared 

 their children for "bed" by taking them 

 on their laps and picking off the burs 

 and ticks. If one of the babies, with its 

 head hanging over the mother's lap, 

 would try to play, reaching out its 

 hands to another baby on the ground, 

 the mother would take it up and slap 

 it and shake it just as human mothers 

 do, then put it down again and go on 

 with her work. And the baby would 

 squeal and the other little one would 

 run off. The one punishment was 

 never sufficient, however, to teach the 

 baby to lie quiet, and it would have to 

 be spanked two or three times before it 

 was ready for bed. * 



Then the children would scamper off 

 up into the tree and we could hear them 

 squealing and fighting for the best 

 jjlaces— probably to get next to their 

 own mothers. It grows dark very 

 quickly in equatorial Africa and they 



