186/.] RANGE OF SEMNOFITHECUS ENTELLUS. 945 



numerous community of Bengal Iloonoomauns appears to consist of 

 males only of different ages, from half-grown or less to adults ; and the 

 natives of that part say that furious battles are frequent among them ; 

 whereas the great majority are females in the other locality that has 

 been spoken of, and it is understood that each male attached to a 

 flock of females allows no other male, even half-grown, to approach 

 them. Though a stream navigable for boats passes through the 

 jungle inhabited by the latter community, or probably series of 

 communities, with plenty of Iloonoomauns on each side of it, the 

 natives of the place informed me that they had never known one to 

 pass across, or, in fact, to enter the water"*. 



There is in this an abundance of credulity on the one side, and 

 of fiction on the other ! Cross the water they will not — a proof 

 that Nature restricts them to the range I have herein [lointed out. 

 But if all tlie males remain on one side of a stream and all the 

 females on the other, as this statement would seem to imply, how 

 does Mr. BIyth propose to carry on the great work of Nature? 

 The story is evidently one of those tales in which native shortsight- 

 edness is clearly apparent; nay, it contradicts itself; for Mr. Blyth 

 states that in one tlock the majority were females, thus admitting 

 the presence of several males, and yet alleges that each male attached 

 to a flock will allow no other male, not even half-grown, to approach 

 the females. The fact appears to be that the troop on one side has 

 evidently been introduced to the locality, while the other is on its 

 proper side, and is prevented by the stream from crossing to the 

 bank where Nature never intended it to reside. The entire account 

 as given by the natives is opposed to the habits and manners of the 

 genus ; for at Bindrabun, ^luttra, and various other places where I 

 have seen them the males and females are promiscuously intermixed ; 

 and although quarrels will sometimes occur, yet as a general rule 

 the whole community lives together in peacefulness. With the 

 Himalayan species the custom is the same, the males and females 

 remaining together at all seasons, even when the females have young 

 ones at the breast, or are followed by yearlings. The only approach 

 to a separation at any season consists in the males of a trooj) keep- 

 ing together and the females doing the same if there are very young 

 ones among them ; but the two divisions form but one troop ; and I 

 am not even yet quite sure that such a trilling division really takes 

 place. 



According to the same authority we learn that Dr. Jerdon, of the 

 Madras Army, has stated of the Entellus that, on the western side 

 of India, "it is peculiar to the dense forests of the western coast. 

 It abounds at the base of the Nilghirries, in Malabar, Travancore, 

 &c., living in small troops, and has the usual loud cry of the others 

 of this genus. The true Entellus," he adds, "I have found chiefly 

 in the neighbourhood of large towns, frequenting groves — also, 

 however, in forest in Goomsoor, and oj)en jungle in the Deccan." 

 Colonel Sykes speaks of the animal as being common in the Western 

 Ghauts, where the Mahrattas call it Makar, and do not venerate it. 

 * J. A. S. B. vol. xii.p. 174, 



