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BABOON. 



BABOON. 



In their native mountains the ordinary food of the Baboons is 

 berries and bulbous roots, but in the vicinity of human habitations 

 they make incursions into the cultivated fields and gardens, and 

 destroy a still greater quantity of grain and fruits than they carry 

 away with them. In well-inhabited countries where they are likely 

 to meet with resistance, their predatory incursions are usually made 

 during the night, and travellers assure us that, taught by experience 

 of the risks to which they expose themselves during such expeditions, 

 they place sentinels upon the surrounding trees and heights to give 

 them timely warning of the approach of danger ; but in wilder and 

 more solitary districts, where the thinness of the population and the 

 want of fire-arms place them on some degree of equality with the 

 inhabitants, they make their forays in the open day, and dispute with 

 the husbandman the fruits of his labour. " I have myself," says 

 Pearce, in his ' Life and Adventures in Abyssinia,' " seen an assembly 

 of large monkeys [baboons] drive the keepers from the fields of grain, 

 in spite of their slings and stones, till several people went from the 

 village to their assistance, and even then they only retired slowly, 

 seeing that the men had no guns." Some travellers even assert that 

 if the troop happens to be surprised in the act of pillaging, the senti- 

 nels pay with their lives for their neglect of the general safety ; but 

 however this may be, it is certain that individuals are frequently met 

 with which exhibit marks of ill-usage from their companions, and 

 which even sometimes appear to have been expelled from their 

 society. Others assure us that the troop sometimes forms a long 

 chain extending from the vicinity of their ordinary habitation to the 

 garden or field which they happen to be engaged in plundering, and 

 that the produce of their theft is pitched from hand to hand till it 

 reaches its destination in the mountains. By this means they are 

 enabled to carry off a much larger booty than if every individual 

 laboured for his own peculiar benefit ; but notwithstanding this 

 attention to the general interest, each takes care before retiring to 

 fill his cheek-pouches with the most choice fruits or grains which he 

 can procure, and also, if not likely to be pursued, to carry off 

 quantities in his hands. After these expeditions the whole troop 

 retire to the mountains to enjoy their booty. They likewise search 

 with avidity for the nests of birds, and suck the eggs ; but if there be 

 young, they kill them and destroy the nest ; as, notwithstanding the 

 evident approximation of their organisation and appetites to carni- 

 vorous animals, they are never known to touch a living prey in a state 

 of nature, and even in captivity will eat no flesh but what has been 

 thoroughly boiled or roasted. In this state we have seen various 

 baboons enjoy their mutton-bone and pick it with apparent satisfac- 

 tion ; but it was evidently an acquired habit, like that of drinking 

 porter and smoking tobacco, which they had been taught by the 

 example of their keepers. 



Of all the Quadrumana the Baboons are the most frightfully ugly. 

 Their small eyes deeply sunk beneath huge projecting eyebrows, their 

 low contracted forehead, and the very diminutive size of their cranium 

 compared with the enormous development of the face and jaws, give 

 them a fierce and malicious look, which is still further heightened by 

 their robust and powerful make, and by the appearance of the enormous 

 teeth which they do not fail to display upon the slightest provocation. 

 The fierceness and brutality of their character and manners correspond 

 with the expression of their physiognomy. These characters are most 

 strongly displayed by the males ; but it is more especially when, in 

 addition to their ordinary disposition, they are agitated by the passion 

 of love or jealousy that their natural habitudes carry them to the 

 most furious and brutal excess. In captivity they are thrown into the 

 greatest agitation at the appearance of young females. It is a common 

 practice among itinerant showmen to excite the natural jealousy of 

 their baboons by caressing or offering to kiss the young females who 

 resort to their exhibitions, and the sight never fails to excite in these 

 animals a degree of rage bordering upon frenzy. On one occasion a 

 large baboon of the species which inhabits the Cape of Good Hope 

 (Cynocepttalus porcarius) escaped from his place of confinement in the 

 ' Jardin des Plantes ' at Paris, and far from showing any disposition 

 to return to his cage, severely wounded two or three of the keepers 

 who attempted to recapture him. After many ineffectual attempts 

 to induce him to return quietly, they at length hit upon a plan which 

 was successful. There was a small grated window at the back part of 

 his den, at which one of the keepers appeared in company with the 

 daughter of the superintendent, whom he appeared to kiss and caress 

 within view of the animal. No sooner did the baboon witness this 

 familiarity than he flew into the cage with the greatest fury, and 

 endeavoured to unfasten the grating of the window which separated 

 him from the object of his jealousy. Whilst employed in this vain 

 attempt the keepers took the opportunity of fastening the door and 

 securing him once more in his place of confinement. Nor is this a 

 solitary instance of the influence which women can exert over the 

 passions of these savage animals : generally untractable and incorrigible 

 whilst under the management of men, it usually happens that baboons 

 are most effectually tamed and led to even more than ordinary 

 obedience in the hands of women, whose attentions they even appear 

 to repay with gratitude and affection. Travellers sometimes speak 

 of the danger which women run who reside in the vicinity of the 

 situations which these animals inhabit, and affirm that the negresses 

 on the coast of Guinea are occasionally kidnapped by the baboons, 



and carried off to their fastnesses : we are even assured that certain 

 of these women have lived among the baboons for many years, and 

 that they were prevented from escaping by being shut up in caves in 

 the mountains, where however they were plentifully fed, and in other 

 respects treated with great kindness. It is to be observed however 

 that these accounts rest upon authority which is by no means unex- 

 ceptionable. Credible and well-informed modern travellers do not 

 relate them, and even their older and more credulous predecessors 

 give them only from hearsay. 



In addition to the mental and physical characters already mentioned, 

 the Baboons, besides the great development of their canine teeth, are 

 distinguished by having a fifth tubercule upon the posterior molar of 

 the under jaw, in which respect they differ from the Apes and 

 Cercopitheci, and resemble the Macacl and Semnopitheci. They are 

 furnished with large callosities and capacious cheek pouches, and 

 their tails, always shorter than those of the Macacks and Monkeys, 

 are carried erect at the root, and then hang pendant perpendicularly, 

 like that of a horse which has not been truncated. Those species 

 which have very short tails carry them upright and erect. The bones 

 of their cheeks also are protuberant and form large swellings on each 

 side of the nose ; and though this character is more strongly marked 

 in the Mandrill and Drill than in the other species, yet all exhibit it 

 in a greater or less degree. It is only since the labours of Messrs. 

 Geoffroy and F. Cuvier have developed the true generic characters of 

 the different groups which compose the family of Quadrumana, that 

 we have become acquainted with the geographical distribution of these 

 animals, and the habitats of the different genera. We have thus 

 learned that the Quadrumana of the African continent are as distinct 

 from those of Asia in their zoological characters as they are in the 

 localities which they inhabit ; hi fact, among upwards of fifty species 

 of Simiadce belonging to the Old World there are only two known 

 instances of an Asiatic genus occurring in Africa, or of an African 

 genus occurring in Asia. One of these instances is even doubtful, 

 since the animal to which it refers, the Common Magot or Barbary 

 Ape, though generally considered as a Macack, is in reality an inter- 

 mediate species between that genus and the Baboons, which it resembles 

 equally in its habitat as it does in its powerful and muscular frame, 

 and hi its general habits and character, and from which it only differs 

 hi the comparative shortness of its face and the less truncated form of 

 its nose. These, to be sure, are very essential characters in the true 

 Baboons ; but in all departments of zoology we find intermediate 

 species, which partake as it were equally of the characteristic forms 

 and organisation of two or even three conterminous genera, and 

 which it is often impossible to include in either without a considerable 

 relaxation in the strict import of their respective definitions. The 

 other instance to which we have alluded regards a real species of 

 Baboon, the Cynocephalus Hamadryas of authors, which is found in 

 Asia and Africa, and which forms the only indisputable instance of 

 any quadrumanous animal being common to both these continents. 

 In other respects the Baboons are a strictly African genus. They 

 inhabit all the great mountain ranges of that continent, from the 

 shores of the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, and are 

 capable of supporting a much lower degree of temperature than any 

 of the other Quadrumana. The lofty mountains of Samen in Abys- 

 sinia, and the bleak and desolate range of the Sneeuwbergen in South 

 Africa, are both tenanted by numerous troops of these animals, which 

 appear to prefer the more rigorous climate of these elevated regions 

 to the hot and sultry forests of the lower plains. Fischer enumerates 

 eleven different species of baboons, but it is evident that some of those 

 which he describes are the females or young of other species ; and in 

 fact the most judicious naturalists, those who describe from their own 

 original observations, do not reckon more than five or six. The 

 following are very distinctly marked, and have been universally 

 admitted : 



1. C. porcariua (Desmarest), the Chacma. The colour of this species 

 is a uniform dark brown, almost black, mixed throughout with a dark 

 green shade, deepest on the head and along the ridge of the back, and 

 paler on the anterior part of the shoulders and on the flanks. The 

 hair over the whole body is long and shaggy, more particularly on 

 the neck and shoulders of the males, where it forms a distinct mane ; 

 each hair is of a light gray colour for some distance from the root, 

 and afterwards annulated throughout its entire length, with distinct 

 rings alternately black and dark green, sometimes though but rarely 

 intermixed with a few of a lighter and yellowish shade. The green 

 predominates on the head more than on other parts ; the face and 

 ears are naked, as are likewise the palms of the hands and soles of the 

 feet ; the interior surfaces of the arms and thighs are but thinly 

 covered with hair, which is long and of a uniform dark -brown colour ; 

 the hair on the toes is short, bristly, and uniformly black ; the neck 

 and shoulders of the male are furnished with a mane of long shaggy hair, 

 which is wanting in the females and young ; and the cheeks of both sexes 

 have small whiskers directed backwards, and of a grayish colour. 

 The tail is rather more than half the length of the body, and is termi- 

 nated by a tuft of long black hair ; the skin of the hands, face, and 

 ears, is of a very dark violet-blue colour, with a paler ring surrounding 

 each eye ; the whole of the upper eyelids are white, as in the Manga- 

 bey (Cercopithecus fuliyinoaus) ; the nose projects a little beyond the 

 upper lip, the nostrils are separated by a small depression or rut, as 



