OLD STORIES. 
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a noise, they chastise them with their fists, but it they find the coast clear, then every one has a 
different noise to express his joy. Nor could there be any way to hinder them from further mul 
tiplying, but that they fall sometimes into the ruder hands of the wild beasts, which they have no 
other way to avoid but by a timely flight, or creeping into the clefts of the rocks. If they find no 
safety in flight, they make a virtue of necessity, stand their ground, and filling their paws full of 
dust or sand, fling it full in the eyes of their assailant, and take to their heels again.” 
It will be seen that there is much truth and a great deal of romance in this narrative. 
The Baboons have had their name given by the Dutch to a plant. The “ Babianer ,” which 
BABOONS UPON AN ANT-HILL. (From Job Ludolphm, 1GS2.) 
botanists have turned into the genus Babiana , is a common group of plants which is found in South 
Africa. 
One kind, the Babiana Sulphurea , greatly resembles in its flower the common Gladiolus of our 
gardens, but it has round, stiff-coated seeds. The sword-shaped leaves arise from an underground 
bulb-like root, which buds near its point so as to rise in the ground to the surface, and the flowers are 
very handsome. The plants flourish in the soil of the great plains of the Cape of Good Hope, where 
they are exposed for two or three months to rain, but where afterwards and for the rest of the year 
the earth becomes so dry that hardly a vestige of vegetation remains. The Baboons, when they roamed 
over these plains formerly, used to dig up the root and eat it voraciously. 
The Baboons are more brute-like than the rest of the Monkeys in appearance, and therefore have 
not that singular resemblance to man which many of the others possess either generally or in their 
:*:aces. Their dog-shaped head, a long muzzle, and a curious fulness on either side of the long nose, 
distinguish them at once from any other Quadrumana. With one or two exceptions the nostrils are 
cpiite at the end of the muzzle, and are separated by a narrow piece of gristle ; they rather project 
beyond the nostril, and can be placed close to the ground as the Baboon runs along to follow or track a 
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