WITH FLASH-LIGHT AND RIFLE 



broken by a strange- sounding humming and buzzing, 

 beginning softly and then swelhng into a mighty chorus, 

 dying away only to begin again. It is hard for a stran- 

 ger to realize that this noise is caused by the "mbegas" 

 in the tree-tops. It soon serves him as a guide to find- 

 ing the "ol goroi" of the Masai. High up in the tops 

 of the gigantic Juniper us procera and of other big trees 

 he sees the quaint singer jumping from tree to tree and 

 disappearing in the foliage. Aside from this long-drawn 

 singing, the monkey also emits at times a short grunt. 



According to my observation, the guereza is born 

 snow-white, and the fur becomes dark as the animal 

 grows older. This monkey is infested by a species of 

 ticks, discovered by me in 1899, the Ixodes schillingsi 

 neumanni. These ticks cause a purulent inflammation 

 of the eyelids. 



A few years ago I found the "mbega" also in the 

 Kahe and Aruscha-Chini oases. It has, however, as 

 Professor Meyer has already pointed out, shorter hair 

 than the mountain species. Here the monkeys were 

 not hunted by the natives, but protected as sacred. 

 The Askari of Moschi station, armed with breech-load- 

 ing rifles, had no such scruples and almost exterminated 

 the colobus of these oases. In 1900 it took me three 

 days to secure three specimens for the Berlin museum 

 of natural history. 



This war of extermination has been carried even into 

 the mountain forests to satisfy the demand for the fur 



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