use there. These shields have gone out of use since the style of armor has been changed, and it is now molested but little, and leads a peaceful life away from the dwellings of men. "In Gallaland, whence your specimens have come," Menges writes to me, "the guereza lives in the thick woods, especially in deep, moist, and warm mountain gorges. It prefers a home in the giant sycamore trees, or wild figs, the fruits of which constitute its principal food. The Abyssinian juniper, which is from twenty-five to thirty metres high, and forms whole forests there, is also much resorted to by it." Brehm, relying upon the unanimity of the accounts which have appeared since the discovery of the guereza by the Abyssinian traveler Rüppell, of Frankfort, enthusiastically praises the beauty, gracefulness, and elegance of the outward appearance of the animal and the agility and grace of its motions, especially its colossal leap, in which the body seems to be carried along by its waving robe. Hans Meyer unconsciously complements this sketch with a description of the quiet, still life of the societies of four or five members in the secure height of their tree-top, and in connection with it mentions a habit not to my knowledge observed before, by which the presence of a band of guerezas can be recognized from a distance. It is a monotonous, sing-song humming, with an alternating crescendo and diminuendo, proceeding from the members of the families sitting lazily together, and to all appearance expressive of complete satisfaction. Perhaps it was because of the absence of this satisfaction that I never heard this humming from my pets. They usually kept themselves quite still, and were accustomed only to greet their beloved greens with a peculiar cry toned between the whimper of the capuchin and the crowing of the young mandrill. With this we have come to the end of our observations on these two peculiar families of monkeys which have been crowded away into the background in our zoological gardens by their livelier, more striking, and more hardy congeners. But we hope that what we have said of their remarkable organization will be enough to make them seem worthy of some attention from the animal-loving reader.—Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from Die Gartenlaube.
Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/409
This page has been validated.
TWO RARE MONKEYS.
395
One of the incentives that send explorers so often back to their work was described by Captain Younghusband after relating to the English Society of Arts the story of his experiences in the Pamirs. Like most travelers, he said, he bad often thought he should not go again on such arduous adventures; but when the traveler returned to his native country, and saw that an interest was taken in what he had done, and that people would still be interested in further journeys he might make, he felt his energies renewed and was quite willing to undergo the hardships which must necessarily befall him, feeling that he was doing something for his government and his country.
