“Not uglier follow the night hag.”
A celebrated French naturalist, who was present at the opening of the casket which contained this zoological jewel, was in raptures, and as the bust emerged he uttered an exclamation significatory of her paternity. We looked in vain for the young imps, which had probably escaped when their poor barrelled-up mother fell. It must be startling to look round in the wilderness of Borneo and behold one of these horrible visages peering, Zamiel-like, from behind the trunk of some dark tree! The impression left on the mind, however, is rather of the comical than of the terrible in its nature after seeing these creatures; but one is obliged to admit that those who see a use in everything may be puzzled to account for this superfluity of nose, for this greatest of all noses does not appear to be like that of the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, “all the better to smell with.”
But some philosophy may be got out of this nose, and it tends to humiliate the pretensions of those anatomists who can restore an animal if they can only get hold of a bone or two.
This nose is an anatomical excrescence: cut it off, and no bones are cut through; dissect the skull, and then no one could tell that there ever had been such a feature attached to it. The dry bones show no sign of what was during life, and the skull resembles those of the other Semnopitheci. So that animals with the same shaped bones may have very different coverings, and no one could restore the nose of this creature out of his inward consciousness any more than he could imagine, from the back-bones of the animals, that camels and dromedaries have humps thereon.
The animal has a huge air sac, which appears to be single, and to enter the windpipe above the larynx cartilage, and between it and the bone of the tongue. It opens into the membrane which connects these structures (the thyroid membrane) on the left side, and the opening can be closed by the contraction of the muscles which reach from the tongue-bone (os hyoides) to the larynx cartilage (thyroid cartilage—the thyro-hyoid muscles).
STOMACH OF THE LONG-NOSED MONKEY.
But the most interesting part of the internal construction of Nasalis is the great stomach, which does not consist of a simple bag, with an opening for the food to enter from the gullet and œsophagus or food pipe, and with another at the opposite end to carry the digested food to the intestines, but is complex, there being three bags united together. The first two of these bags are for the storage and reception of food, and the other, which ends in the canal leading to the intestines, is for its digestion. This compound stomach is peculiar to the Semnopitheci and the Colobi amongst the Monkeys. It exists in the most perfect form in the animals which chew the cud or ruminate, such as oxen. It is noticed also, more or less, in the Cetacea, or Whale tribe, in the Sloths, in the Cony, or Hyrax, in the fruit-eating Bats of the genus Pteropus, and finally in some Kangaroo-like animals. It is possible that the Semnopitheci may bring back more food into the mouth and chew it again, or the first two expansions of the stomach may be really simple receptacles and storehouses grown in the place of the cheek-pouches; or the condition may be a reversion, or going back, to the condition of some remote ancestor.
The large intestine is also very bulged out here and there, and this and the large stomach occupy much space in the cavity of the belly, compressing the bowels within smaller bounds than in the larger Monkeys.
Bezoars are found in the sacs of the stomach of the different kinds of Semnopitheci, and were and may be still much prized. They are potent charms and remedies against poisons, and are supposed to possess extraordinary virtues. The name comes from the Persian, writes the learned author of the article “Bezoars,” in the “Penny Cyclopædia”—Pêd-zahr, expelling poison, the expeller of poison. “Pêd” is relieving and curing, and “Zahr” is poison. Bezoars are sometimes found in various parts, but chiefly in the stomachs of land animals. They are either natural or artificial, and as they are rare, they are worth many times their weight in gold. Those which were most esteemed in Europe came from the East, and were the earliest used. The most highly prized came from the stomachs of the wild goat of Persia, and they were called by way of eminence, Lapis Bezoar Orientalis, and all such things which were supposed to be antidotes were called Bezoardic. They are still esteemed in the East, but have long fallen into disuse in Europe, the chemist and the naturalist having abolished their value by exposing their real nature. They are the round hard balls which are found in the stomachs of many animals, and which consist of hair licked off and swallowed, and food of every clinging nature cemented together by mucus. They get too large to pass out of the stomach, either by vomiting or by going through the small canal into the intestine, and therefore become round by being rolled about, and often very great. Very large ones are discovered in some horses which are found at work near flour and bran mills. The Americans got theirs from the Llama, and they consisted principally of phosphate of lime. Perhaps the earliest of all physics was bezoardic, and it consisted of the heart and liver of vipers, pounded up for the benefit of the invalid. Fortunately, bezoars disappeared from the list of useful drugs years ago, with the crabs’-claws, oyster-shells, powdered centipedes, and other medical delicacies with which our forefathers were drenched in good faith and secundum artem.