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THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



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number several hundreds, occasional quarrels and fights are inevitable, 

 but as a rule they live on very friendly terms, often playing and sporting 

 together ; in turning stones to search for insects and other small animals 

 they unite to roll over those which are too large and heavy for one 

 baboon to move ; and in time of danger the females and young keep 

 together, whilst the males boldly advance to attack the enemy. Their 

 jaws are armed with formidable teeth, and their strength and courage 

 enable them to defy even the leopard. As illustrating the height which 

 social instincts may attain amongst baboons, an oft told tale of heroism 

 will bear repeating once more. It comes to us on the authority of the 

 great German naturalist Brehm, who spent five years in Africa, and on 

 one occasion in Abyssinia saw a great troop of baboons crossing a valley; 

 the dogs belonging to Brehm's party rushed to attack them, but quickly 

 retreated before the advancing males ; one young baboon, however, had 

 straggled behind, and to escape the dogs clambered upon a rock, which 

 was quickly surrounded. Its cries of distress were heard, and one of 

 the old males returned down the mountain and gently led the young one 

 back to its comrades, the dogs being apparently too much astonished to 

 make a combined attack on the rescuer. This courageous animal was 

 a hamadryad {Cynocephalus hamadvyas) ; a kindred species (C. gelada), the 

 geladas, resemble the hamadryads in living in large troops and being 

 highly social. Between these species there is much hostility, and 

 frequent battles take place between the troops. The common baboon, 

 with its allies the Chacma and Guinea baboon, are somewhat smaller 

 and less formidable looking animals, which rarely assemble in such large 

 troops as do the maned species ; three or four males, eight or ten 

 females, and from a dozen to a score infants and half-grown young make 

 up the average troop. Sometimes, however, in dry seasons the mane- 

 less baboons congregate in very large numbers near watercourses, but 

 this is solely due to the limitation of the area in which food and water 

 can be obtained, and such aggregations are not fairly comparable with 

 the large troops in which the geladas and hamadryads normally live. 



Widely separated from the baboons, since they have diverged from 

 the central Catarrhine type in another direction, are the Anthropoid 

 apes, of which there are about a dozen species grouped into three 

 genera. Of these the lowest are the gibbons, gentle, peaceable animals, 

 which inhabit the forests of the Malayan regions, where they occur in 

 troops of 20 or 30. They are nearly allied to the Dryopitheci of the 

 Miocene age, and represent more closely than any existing apes the 

 Tertiary forms from which the higher apes and man have emerged. It 

 seems probable that the Tertiary ancestor of the gorilla, chimpanzee, 

 orang, and man resembled the modern gibbons, not only in his structure 

 but in his habits, and was a social arboreal animal. Such of his 

 descendants as acquired great size and strength no longer needed to be 



