LANGURS. 
73 
of two females. I felt that the fight was not a fair one, but was deterred from 
interfering by a wish to see what the end of the affray would be, and the end, so 
far as the solitary hanuman was concerned, soon came. Each female flung herself 
upon him, and though he fought his enemies gallantly, one of the females succeeded 
in seizing him. Possibly he would have been killed outright had I not been 
present, but when I saw him so helpless, I interfered on the chance of being able 
to save him. He was, however, hopelessly mutilated, and before the morning he 
was dead. Not one of his own troop came to his aid. I presume they were either 
awed by the array of numbers on the other side, or they had full confidence in 
their leader. Had they assisted, they might in the end have been better off, for 
the result of the defeat of their champion was that the whole of the aggressors 
entered upon a guerilla warfare, and, isolating several of the members of the weaker 
troop, kept them prisoners under surveillance. Whenever the latter tried to break 
away, their guards stopped them, and then effectually watched them by occupying 
every piece of vantage-ground. One female with a young one was most viciously 
chased, and when, in her efforts to escape her enemies, she climbed to one of the 
highest limbs of a big tree, those in pursuit actually shook the branch on which 
she was, and jerked her to the ground. The fall was a nasty one, and she was so 
badly hurt that in the course of the night she went to swell the list of the fatally 
wounded. The defeated troops were thoroughly cowed, for one of the number 
actually allowed me to approach it quite closely without moving. I certainly do 
not ascribe the onslaught I saw to sexual excitement. It was plainly an incursion 
of a stronger troop into the domain of a weaker one; and, under mistaken counsel, 
the weaker hesitated too long in yielding their feeding ground.” 
The Himalayan Langur (Semnopithecus schistaceus). 
Very closely related to the hanuman is the Himalayan langur ( S. schistaceus), 
so closely indeed that Dr. John Anderson considers it ought only to be reckoned 
as a variety of that species. In the opinion of Mr. Blanford—our most recent autho¬ 
rity on Indian Mammals—it is, however, considered to be entitled to rank as a well- 
marked species; and this observer gives the following characters by which it may 
be distinguished from the hanuman. The Himalayan species is characterised “ by 
being somewhat larger,—although there is probably no great difference between 
large individuals of both species,—by the head being much paler in colour than the 
back, and by the feet being but little, if at all, darker than the limbs; by the 
smaller ears, and by their being concealed by the long hair of the cheeks; by the 
form of the skull.” 
This species is found throughout the greater part of the Himalaya proper, 
ranging from Bhutan in the south-east to the Kashmir valley and adjacent regions 
in the north-west. It appears not to be found below five thousand feet, and 
in the interior of Sikhim it ranges as high as twelve thousand feet. One of the 
first, if not actually the first record of the occurrence of the Himalayan langur 
in the interior of Sikhim will be found in Sir J. W. Hooker’s Himalayan Journals. 
The author of that charming book of travel says, on arriving at a Tatar village, at an 
elevation of about nine thousand feet, “ I saw a troop of large monkeys gamboling 
