CHAP. I.] MONKEYS. 131 



fur, and carefully divesting its hair of particles of dust. 

 Although common in the southern and western provinces, 

 it is never found at a higher elevation than 1300 

 feet. 



When observed in their native wilds, a party of 

 twenty or thirty of these creatures is generally busily 

 engaged in the search for berries and buds. They 

 are seldom to be seen on the ground, except when 

 they may have descended to recover seeds or fruit 

 which have fallen at the foot of their favourite trees. 

 When disturbed, their leaps are prodigious ; but ge- 

 nerally speaking, their progress is made not so much 

 by leaping as by swinging from branch to branch, 

 using their powerful arms alternately ; and when 

 baffled by distance, flinging themselves obliquely so as 

 to catch the lower boughs of an opposite tree, the mo- 

 mentum acquired by their descent being sufficient to 

 cause a rebound of the branch, that carries them up- 

 wards again, till they can grasp a higher and more distant 

 one, and thus continue their headlong flight. In these 

 perilous achievements, wonder is excited less by the sur- 

 passing agility of these little creatures, frequently encum- 

 bered 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 almost to cal- 

 culate the angle at which a descent will enable them to 

 cover a given distance, and the recoil to elevate them to 

 a higher altitude. 



2. The low country Wanderoo is replaced in the hills 

 by the larger species, P. ursinus, which inhabits the 

 mountain zone. The natives, who designate the latter 

 the Maha or Great Wanderoo, to distinguish it from 

 the Kaloo, or black one, with which they are familiar, 

 describe it as much wilder and more powerful than its 

 congener of the lowland forests. It is rarely seen by 

 Europeans, this portion of the country having till very 

 recently been but partially opened ; and even now it is 

 difficult to observe its habits, as it seldom approaches the 



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