SACRED BABOONS. jr^ 



Hindoo. " Brahm is just; come, repent in time." The 

 bull never budged, and the farmer at last summoned two 

 companions. " Oh, my son !" they began again, but 

 at the same time two of them seized the bull's horns 

 left and right and thus trotted him out, chanting a pas- 

 sage from the Upanishads, while their assistant enforced 

 the quotation by hammering a board with a sort of 

 mallet. 



Honumans cannot be disposed of in that way; you 

 have to catch them first, and if you drive them over one 

 fence the odds are that they will come back across an- 

 other. They know their enemies, though, and keep a 

 sharp lookout if secular reasons oblige them to visit the 

 premises of an unbeliever. Only the brown face of a 

 Hindoo encourages them to make themselves quite at 

 home ; and only the Hindoo farmer is ever treated to a 

 full display of their gymnastic abilities. To see a swarm 

 of honumans at play is a treat even for an East-Indian 

 sight-seer familiar with the miraculous performances of 

 the native acrobats. The evolutions of the boldest dis- 

 ciple of the Turner-hall would appear tame compared 

 with the feats of the four-handed champion, for among 

 the monkey-gymnasts of the Old World the Semnopit/ie- 

 cus entellns has no superior and only one rival, the 

 equally long-armed black gibbon. Haeckel seems to 

 be right, this earth must really be very old. Only the 

 accumulated experience of many thousand generations 

 can have developed such accomplishments. Without 



