Chap. I.] 
MONKEYS. 
U 
merous, these monkeys become so familiarised with the 
presence of man as to exhibit the utmost daring and 
indifference. A flock of them will take possession of 
a Palmyra palm; and so effectually can they crouch 
and conceal themselves among the leaves that, on the 
slightest alarm, the whole party becomes invisible in an 
instant. The presence of a dog, however, excites such 
an irrepressible curiosity that, in order to watch his 
movements, they never fail to betray themselves. They 
may be frequently seen congregated on the roof of a 
native hut : and, some years ago, the child of a Euro- 
pean clergyman stationed near Jaffna having been left 
on the ground by the nurse, was so teased and bitten by 
them as to cause its death. 
The Singhalese have the impression that the remains 
of a monkey are never to be found in the forest ; a 
belief which they have embodied in the proverb that 
" he who has seen a white crow, the nest of a paddi 
bird, a straight coco-nut tree, or a dead monkey, is 
certain to live for ever." This piece of folk-lore has 
evidently reached Ceylon from India, where it is be- 
lieved that persons dwelling on the spot where a hanu- 
man monkey, Semnopithecus entellus, has been killed, 
will die, that even its bones are unlucky, and that no 
house erected where they are hid under ground can 
prosper. Hence when a dwelling is to be built, it is 
one of the employments of the Jyotish philosophers to 
ascertain by their science that none such are concealed ; 
and Buchanan observes that " it is, perhaps, owing to 
this fear of ill-luck that no native will acknowledge his 
having seen a dead hanuman." 1 
1 Buchanan's Survey ofBhagul- monkey has never been found on 
poor, p. 142. At Gibraltar it is the rock, 
believed that the body of a dead 
