EAST AFRICAN MAMRIALS. 689 



PAI'IO OYNOCEI'IIALUS Lillll. 



Iloku ill Kikanii, Nyabu in Kisagai-a, Njiuii in Kiswaliili, 



Eight examples of the Yellow Baboon were shot in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Kilosa, where it is all too common. 



The largest male measured 858. G37. 237. 55 mm., and female 

 ()85. 5G5. 170. 48 mm. 



I believe they breed pretty well all the year round. Females 

 carrying young were met with in July and August, 1921, May 

 and July, 1922. A female was killed on lO.iv. 22 with a 

 2 f<otus -weighing 10 ozs. and measuring 171. 136. 52. 22 mm. 

 The young are sometimes carried on the back but generally, and 

 especially when very young, they cling to their mother's breasts, 

 thus being back downwards when she is walking. 



A baboon's dietary is too large and varied to recoi'd ; they 

 break down the mulberry bushes when in fruit with great reck- 

 lessness, and exhibit this same lack of foresight in their ruthless 

 treatment of paupau trees. In one instance, a tree which was 

 growing against the kitchen wall had its stem gnawed through 

 near the ground so that the tree, which was very heavy with 

 fruit, fell. Their love for paupau fruit emboldens them to come 

 within ten feet of the house. 



One of my collectors set a snare for a bushfowl, and on visiting 

 the trap one morning found one leg in the noose and a baboon 

 eating the rest in a nearby tree. I have been told that in 

 Bagamoyo District the natives have the greatest difficulty in 

 keeping fowls owing to the baboons carrying them off, but 

 whether it is the present species that is concerned I cannot say. 



If one is armed they are extraordinarily wary and difHcult to 

 approach, and if suddenly surprised run away uttering piercing 

 screams, and at other times they treat one with more or less 

 contempt. Other animals seem to derive benefit from association 

 with baboon troops : a female bushbuck was seen with a company 

 in a rubber plantation on many occasions during the spring of 

 1921, and I saw the same or another running up the road in 

 company with a troop about 3 p.m. in the afternoon of 11. v. 22. 

 On 29. vi. 22, some ten wild pigs with a party of baboons passed 

 within two hundred yards of the house. 



Their vitality is both astonishing and heartrending. Some- 

 body liaving fired at a baboon near the house one day was sure 

 that he had mortally woi^nded it, but I came upon the poor boast 

 all alone at 6 a.m. two days later. It was crouched upon a sheet 

 of galvanised iron by a deserted German house in the bush, and 

 was applying its jaw to the iron with the very evident object of 

 assuaging the pain, for its lower jaw was torn away on one side. 

 I shot it through the chest at close range, and yet it ran for sixty 

 feet before it dropped dead. I firmly believe the native story 

 that a wounded baboon will clap its hand over a Avound and 

 successfully staunch the fiow of blood, whether with the intention 

 of leaving no blood spoor I cannot say. Several times I have 



