MR. R. OWEN ON THE STOMACH OF SEMNOPITHECUS. 69 
What then are the natural habits and food of this genus? Will future observers of 
these slow Monkeys, as M. F. Cuvier denominates them, be able to ascertain that their 
natural food is more strictly vegetable than that of the Cercopitheci, &c.? And that, like 
the Sloths of the new continent, so remarkable for their complex stomachs, they also 
crop the tender shoots and leaves of the trees in which they habitually reside? Cerco- 
pitheci and Macaci are provided by nature with receptacles (the cheek-pouches) for storing 
away ill-gotten food, hastily plucked from the cultivated grounds which they invade, 
and which they are thus enabled to carry off in sufficient quantity, and masticate and 
prepare for digestion in a place of safety. The complicated stomachs of the timid Ru- 
minants are adapted to a similar end, allowing them to accumulate their requisite 
quantity of herbage from exposed pastures, which they then carry off to more secure 
situations and remasticate at leisure. Now in the Semnopitheci it is remarkable that 
the cheek-pouches are very small, or are wanting altogether. I have often fed the Kn- 
tellus Monkey with nuts, and have observed that while his more fortunate neighbours, 
the green Monkey, Cercopithecus Sabeus, Geoff., and Chinese bonneted Monkey, Macacus 
Sinicus, La Cép., were stowing them quickly away by the dozen into their cheek- 
pouches, he could not cram more than two in the same situation, and was equally 
averse to swallowing anything but the kernel. In this case the complicated stomach 
did not serve him as a substitute ; but I think it very probable that it may compensate 
for the want of cheek-pouches, when he is in a situation to collect together a quantity 
of soft fruits or herbs. In the Gardens of the Society the Semnopitheci which have 
been there exhibited, are fed exactly in the same manner as the other Monkeys; and 
the Keepers have not observed anything like rumination in them. _ 
In both the species which I have dissected, where illness and gradual decay preceded 
death, the stomachs were almost empty. 
With respect to stomachs of an analogous structure in other animals of the class 
Mammalia, I have hitherto limited my comparisons to that of the Kangaroo, so well 
known for its remarkable resemblance to a sacculated colon and cecum. Between this 
animal and Semnopithecus there is a wide interval in the natural series. Stomachs, 
however, almost as complex as the preceding, are found in animals much more nearly 
allied to the Quadrumana. In a large Bat of the genus Pteropus, Pteropus rubricollis, 
Geoff., I found the cardiac moiety divided into two dilated compartments, of which 
the left is again subdivided, and plicated within, while the pyloric moiety is extended 
in an elongated tortuous form, proportionately exceeding in length that of Semnopithecus 
Entellus. It is to a Pteropus doubtless, and not to a Vampyrus, that is to be attributed 
a similarly complicated stomach described and figured by Sir Everard Home as be- 
longing to the Vampyre Bat, and from which he draws the rather hasty conclusions 
that ‘‘the Vampyre Bat lives on the sweetest of vegetables ; and all the stories related 
with so much confidence, of its living on blood, and coming in the night to destroy 
people while asleep, are entirely fabulous.” I suspect that the stomach of the true 
