136 



ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



within ten or twelve feet before he betakes himself to 

 the next tree. A sacred bull won't go out of his way 

 to please the Governor-General. He encamps all over 

 the sidewalk on the shady side of the street, letting 

 saints and sinners take their chances in the gutter. The 

 vegetable-market is his favorite stamping-ground ; a lit- 

 tle frolic now and then must be submitted to by the 

 best of foreign residents as well as natives ; when the 

 reverend quadruped indulges in a frisk, the bipeds must 

 pick up their bananas or bones and say no more about 

 it. The sacred crocodiles bask on the shore and don't 

 mind it a bit if you should indulge in an uncharitable 

 remark about their plethoric appearance as compared 

 with the condition of the human natives; but if one 

 pelts them with pebbles they will turn their heads with 

 a vicious snap, though without thinking it worth while 

 to pursue a fugitive, their digestive powers being pre- 

 engaged. 



But the monkeys commune with their Darwinian 

 relatives on a footing of equality which the Watertonian 

 method would probably fail to establish in less than 

 forty generations. My countryman Dr. Vanjorden went 

 to Northern India as a scientific attache of Lord Dal- 

 housie's expedition, and during a residence of five years 

 in the Punjaub and about three years in Bengal and 

 Western Nepaul availed himself of several opportunities 

 to visit the principal mahakhunds of those monkey- 

 ridden regions. The baboon-asylum of Bhonaghir, near 



