546 LEGENDS CONNECTED WITH THE LORIS CHAP. 
The animal has a wide distribution in the East, occurring in 
Assam and Burmah, the Malay Peninsula, Siam, and Cochin-China, 
Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the Philippines. Its vernacular 
names signify “ Bashful Cat” and “ Bashful Monkey” 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 
Fic. 262.—Slow Loris. Nycticebus tardigradus. 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 Proc. Zool. Soc. 1900, p. 321. 
