THE LANGURS 71 



some damage, however, before going under, having wounded his opponent in the 

 shoulder, and matters then seemed pretty evenly balanced between the remaining 

 strugglers. I confess that my sympathies were with the one champion who had 

 gallantly withstood the charge of his enemies ; and I fancy the tide of victory would 

 have been in his favor had the odds against him not been re-enforced by the advance 

 of two females. I felt that the fight was not a fair one, but was deterred from in- 

 terfering by a .wish to see what the end of the affray would be, and the end, so far 

 as the solitary hanuman was concerned, soon came. Each female flung herself upon 

 him, and though he fought his enemies gallantly, one of the females succeeded in 

 seizing him. Possibly he would have been killed outright had I not been present, 

 but when I saw him so helpless, I interfered on the chance of being able to save 

 him. He was, however, hopelessly mutilated, and before the morning he was dead. 

 Not one of his own troop came to his aid. I presume they were either awed by the 

 array of numbers on the other side, or they had full confidence in their leader. 

 Had they assisted, they might in the end have been better off, for the result of the 

 defeat of their champion was that the whole of the aggressors entered upon a guerilla 

 warfare, and, isolating several of the members of the weaker troop, kept them pris- 

 oners under surveillance. Whenever the latter tried to break away, their guards 

 stopped them, and then effectually watched them by occupying every piece of van- 

 tage ground. One female with a young one was most viciously chased, and when, 

 in her efforts to escape her enemies, she climbed to one of the highest limbs of a big 

 tree, those in pursuit actually shook the branch on which she was, and jerked her 

 to the ground. The fall was a nasty one, and she was so badly hurt that in the 

 course of the night she went to swell the list of the fatally wounded. The defeated 

 troops were thoroughly cowed, for one of the number actually allowed me to ap- 

 proach it quite closely without moving. I certainly do not ascribe the onslaught I 

 saw to sexual excitement. It was plainly an incursion of a stronger troop into the 

 domain of a weaker one ; and, under mistaken counsel, the weaker hesitated too 

 long in yielding their feeding ground. ' ' 



THE HIMALAYAN L, ANGER (Semnopithecus schistaceus) 



Very closely related to the hanuman is the Himalayan langur (S. schistaceus} , 

 so closely indeed that Dr. John Anderson considers it ought only to be reckoned 

 as a variety of that species. In the opinion of Mr. Blanford our most recent 

 authority on Indian Mammals it is, however, considered to be entitled to rank as a 

 well-marked species ; and this observer gives the following charactersistics by which 

 it may be distinguished from the hanuman. The Himalayan species is character- 

 ized "by being somewhat larger, although there is probably no great difference 

 between large individuals of both species, by the head being much paler in color 

 than the back, and by the feet being but little, if at all, darker than the limbs ; by 

 the smaller ears, and by their being concealed by the long hair of the cheeks ; by 

 the form of the skull." 



This species is found throughout the greater part of the Himalayas proper, 

 ranging from Bhutan in the southeast to the Kashmir valley and adjacent regions 



