546 



LEGENDS CONNECTED WITH THE LORIS 



The animal has a wide distribution in the East, occurring in 

 Assam and Burmah, the Malay I'eninsula, Siam, and Cochin-China, 

 Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the Philippines. Its vernacular 

 names signify " Bashful Cat " and " Bashful Moidcey " in allusion 

 to its nocturnal and shy habits. It lives among trees, which it 

 does not voluntarily leave. Its movements are deliberate, as its 

 popular name. Slow Loris, implies ; but it makes up for this by 

 a vigorous tenacity of grasp. The animals " make a curious 



Fig. 262. — Slow Loris. Xijcticebus tarcUgradus. x \. 



chattering when angry, and when pleased at night they utter a 

 short though tuneful whistle of one unvaried note, which is 

 thought by Chinese sailors to presage wind." Much superstition 

 has collected round this harmless though rather weird-looking 

 creature. Its influence over human beings is as active when it 

 is dead as when it is alive. " Thus," writes Mr. Stanley Flower,^ 

 " a Malay may commit a crime he did not premeditate, and then 

 find that an enemy had buried a particular part of a loris under 

 his threshold, which had, unknown to him, compelled him to act 

 to his own disadvantage." The life of the Loris, adds Mr. Flower, 



1 Pwc. Zool. Soc. 1900, p. 32L 



