SOME NATIVE LEGENDS 
clans, and do fierce battle ; in these combats discipline and 
co-operation are apparent, an interesting foreshadowing 
of human ways. The Hanuman is exceedingly agile, 
and will bound from branch to branch, sometimes 
attaining to a leap of 20 to 30 feet measured horizontally, 
but rendered easier by a corresponding drop of 40 to 50 
feet. In spite of this astounding activity, F. Cuvier 
stigmatized the groups as “slow monkeys”! The 
Hanuman shares with mana detestation and fear of the 
tiger ; a group or troupe of these monkeys will follow 
a tiger, making Simian remarks, and plainly indicating 
its position to the following hunters. In Siam it is held 
among various native traditions that the Semnopitheci 
are dangerous apes to the human kind; that they play 
the part of vampires, and suck the blood of sleeping men 
in the forests. But there is no truth in this belief, the 
Semnopitheci being, as a matter of fact, vegetarian 
in the extreme even for a monkey. No insects and 
grubs of various kinds, no eggs and young birds enter 
their purely leafy, fruit, and grain diet. In captivity 
these animals are described as sedate and indolent till 
old age supervenes, which induces a more truculent 
demeanour. The nosed ape, Rhinopithecus, with a 
little upturned and pointed nose, not snout, has been 
referred to. There is another form known as Nasalis 
larvatus, which has also a longish nose quite human in 
sharpness andlength. These formsare the only monkeys 
with anything comparable to the human nose. 
THE GUEREZA 
It is interesting to note that while the macaques of 
the East are represented in Africa by the closely allied 
Guenons and Mangabeys, the Semnopitheci of the East 
are also represented in Africa by a type of monkey 
closely allied to themselves but forming a distinct 
37 
