1844.] Notices of various Mammalia. 465 



ground enabled him to escape. Having at first, relates Mr. Owen, to 

 cross a number of felled logs, it was really no easy matter to get away ; 

 but the clear and open road once gained, he was not long in distancing 

 his pursuers. Upon his return, after this threatened attack of the 

 Hoolocks, Mr. Owen asked his Assamese interpreter, (who had been 

 brought up in the hills,) whether it was usual for these Apes to mani- 

 fest so hostile a disposition ; and he was informed that only a few days 

 before, as a party of Nagas were proceeding along one of the tortuous 

 jungle paths, necessarily in Indian file, the foremost man who was a 

 little ahead of the rest, was actually attacked and severely bitten on the 

 shoulder, and would probably have been killed by his assailants, had 

 not others of his party opportunely come to the rescue, upon which 

 the Hoolocks immediately fled. Indeed I can testify to the capability 

 of these animals to inflict serious injury, from having witnessed a tame 

 female of the Sumatran H. agilis suddenly attack her keeper, by 

 springing up at him, grasping his body with her four limbs, and 

 biting at his chest, when it was fortunate for the man that her canines 

 had been previously filed down; in consequence, as was said, of her 

 having occasioned the death of a man at Macao.* According to Mr. 

 Owen's account, the Hoolocks would also appear capable of destroying 

 large snakes ; for his attention was once arrested by the noise which a 

 party of them were making on the tops of some lofty trees overhead, 

 when after a while he was startled by the fall of a Python Snake, of 

 about six or seven feet in length, within a few paces. The reptile was 

 nearly dead, or for that matter might have been disabled by the fall, 

 but it had been severely bitten and lacerated, no doubt by the Hoo- 

 locks above, who were unquestionably the cause of its precipitation. 



Of the Javanese species (//. leuciscus, F. Cuv.), the Society has 

 lately obtained a fine female specimen, the colouring of which is some- 

 what remarkable, although nearly resembling that of a male described 

 and figured in the unpublished MSS. and drawings of the late Dr. 

 Buchanan Hamilton. General hue pale greyish-brown, or rather 



* From what I have seen of the Gibbon tribe when brought up tame, no animals 

 could be more gentle and good-tempered ; but the lady in question had good reason 

 for the utter hatred which she bore to her keeper, who used to make her display her 

 wondrous activity a hundred times a day, in swinging from bough to bough of a large 

 artificial tree by means of her fore-limbs only, by frequent application of the whip. 



