THE WAXDEROOS. 505 



stranger, to whom they very justly attributed evil intentions, 

 might be tempted to add their skins to his collection. 



The Semnopitheci are scattered over Asia in so great a multi- 

 plicity of forms, that Ceylon alone possesses four different species, 

 each of which has appropriated to itself a different district of 

 the wooded country, and seldom encroaches on the domain of 

 its neighbours. ' When observed in their native wilds,' says 

 Sir J. E. Tennent, ' a party of twenty or thirty of the Wanderoos 

 of the low country, the species best known in Europe [Presbytes 

 cephalopterus), is generally busily engaged in the search for 

 berries and buds. They are seldom to be seen on the ground, 

 and then only when they liave descended to recover seeds or 

 fruit that have fallen at the foot of their favourite trees. In 

 their alarm, when disturbed, their leaps are prodigious, but 

 generally speaking their progress is made not so much by leap- 

 ing as by swinging from branch to branch, using their powerful 

 arms alternately, and when baffled by distance, flinging them- 

 selves obliquely so as to catch the lower bough of an opposite tree ; 

 the momentum acquired by their descent being sufficient to 

 cause a rebound, that carries them again upwards till they can 

 grasp a higher branch, and thus continue their headlong flight. 

 In these perilous achievements wonder is excited less by tlie 

 surpassing agility of these little creatures, frequently encumbered 

 as they are by their young, which cling to them in their career, 

 than by the quickness of their eye and the unerring accuracy 

 with which they seem to calculate almost the angle at which a 

 i* descent would enable them to cover a given distance, and the 

 recoil to elevate themselves again to a higher altitude.' 



The African Colobi greatly resemble the Asiatic Semnopitheci, 

 but differ by the remarkable circumstance of having no thumb 

 on the hands of their anterior extremities. 



The Cercopitheci likewise possess a large tail, which is, how- 

 ever, not more or less pendulous, as in the semnopitheci, but 

 generally carried erect over the back. They have also a longer 

 face, and their cheeks are furnished with pouches, in which, like 

 the pelican or the hamster, they are capable of stowing part of 

 their food ; an organisation which seems to denote that they are 

 inhal)itants of a country where the forests are less extensive. 

 They are not devoid of intelligence, but extremely restless and 

 noisy. Many that were mild and amiable while young, undergo 



