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Chap. XVIII.
Mammals—Ornamental Colours.
537

mature male of the beautifully coloured and spotted axis deer is considerably darker than the female; and this hue the castrated male never acquires.

The last Order which we need consider is that of the Primates. The male of the Lemur macaco is generally coal-black, whilst the female is brown.[1] Of the Quadrumana of the New World, the females and young of Mycetes caraya are greyish-yellow and like each other; in the second year the young male becomes reddish-brown; in the third, black, excepting the stomach, which, however, becomes quite black in the fourth or fifth year. There is also a strongly-marked difference in colour between the sexes of Mycetes seniculus and Cebus capucinus; the young of the former, and I believe of the latter species, resembling the females. With Pithecia leucocephala the young likewise resemble the females, which are brownish-black above and light rusty-red beneath, the adult males being black. The ruff of hair round the face of Ateles marginatus is tinted yellow in the male and white in the female. Turning to the Old World, the males of Hylobates hoolock are always black, with the exception of a white band over the brows; the females vary from whity-brown to a dark tint mixed with black, but are never wholly black.[2] In the beautiful Cercopithecus diana, the head of the adult male is of an intense black, whilst that of the female is dark grey; in the former the fur between the thighs is of an elegant fawn-colour, in the latter it is paler. In the beautiful and curious moustache monkey (Cercopithecus cephus) the only difference between the sexes is that the tail of the male is chesnut and that of the female grey; but Mr. Bartlett informs me that all the hues becomes more pronounced in the male when adult, whilst in the female they remain as they were during youth. According to the coloured figures given by Solomon Müller, the male of Semnopithecus chrysomelas is nearly black, the female being pale brown. In the Cercopithecus cynosurus and griseoviridis one part of the body, which is confined to the male sex, is of the most brilliant blue or green, and contrasts strikingly with the naked skin on the hinder part of the body, which is vivid red.

Lastly, in the baboon family, the adult male of Cynocephalus hamadryas differs from the female not only by his immense

  1. Sclater, 'Proc. Zool. Soc.' 1866, p. 1. The same fact has also been fully ascertained by MM. Pollen and van Dam. See, also, Dr. Gray in 'Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist.' May 1871, p. 340.
  2. On Mycetes, Rengger, ibid, s. 14; and Brehm, 'Illustrirtes Thierleben,' B. i. s. 96, 107. On Ateles, Desmarest, 'Mammalogie,' p. 75. On Hylobates, Blyth, 'Land and Water,' 1867, p. 135. On the Semnopithecus, S. Müller, 'Zoog. Indischen Archipel.' tab. x.