MONKEYS. 



439 





FIG. 484. ORANG-OUTANG, MANDRIL, AND SPIDER MONKEY. 



considerable agility, and frequent the wooded mountains and wildest rocks. 

 They feed on fruit and vegetables, and do much damage by pillaging fields and 

 gardens. The Baboons nearly all inhabit Africa. To these belong 



The Mandrils (Fig. 484). These are among the most extraordinary and 

 hideous creatures imaginable : their colour is a brown grey, inclining to olive ; 

 their chin is furnished with a lemon-coloured beard, their cheeks are of a bril- 

 liant blue, and their nose red, especially near the top, where it is bright scarlet, 

 while the hinder part of the body is of a deep violet tint. These creatures 

 attain to a very large size, and are justly feared by the negroes of the Guinea 

 coast, where they are common. 



The Macaques * (Macacus] are provided with callosities on the hinder part 

 of their body, and with cheek-pouches, which serve them as pcckets wherein 

 they stow away their food. Their muzzle is somewhat prolonged, and their 

 eyebrows remarkably prominent, so that their whole physiognomy is peculiar. 

 When young these monkeys are exceedingly docile, but they become intract- 

 able as they grow old. They are all furnished with a bag situated beneath the 

 skin of their throat, which communicates with the larynx and can be filled with 

 air, thus enabling them to utter peculiarly loud and dissonant cries. Their tail 

 is of moderate length, but is of no use to them as a locomotive agent 



The Semnopitheci.t peculiar to the Eastern World, are remarkable on 



* Macaco is a general name given to monkeys by the negroes on the Guinea coast of Africa, 

 f cefjivbs, semnos, solemn ; TriBtjKOS, pithecos, an ape. 



