SUMATRA MONKEY. (From Temminck.)
THE HOONUMAN MONKEY.[29]
This is the most sacred of the sacred Monkeys of the Hindoos, and when full-grown, measures four feet and a half in length, and the tail is considerably longer than the body. An ashy-grey tint distinguishes the upper part of the body, and it is darkest on the tail, which is of equal thickness throughout. The rest of the body is of a dingy yellow colour, or rusty brown, and the arms, hands, and feet are dusky black. The long face is blackish; and above the eyebrows is a line of long stiff projecting black hairs. A greyish-white beard passes round the face, and extends upwards, and is thicker in front of the ears, which are long and prominent and black. Finally, this face has a few hairs by way of a beard beneath the chin, which projects.
A long-legged, active creature is the Entellus. It associates in great troops, and they keep up a constant noise and quarrel. Those that abound—thanks to the belief in their semi-divinity by the Hindoos—near towns and plantations are certainly more sharp, clever, and impudent than their less fortunate fellows. They watch and steal with impunity and ability, and are amusing when young, but savage and disagreeable when old. The young differ much in shape from the old adults, and their limbs seem very disproportioned at first. They have a staid look about them, and a tranquil eye, and the forehead is broad and high, the muzzle only slightly prominent, and the brain-case large. But with age this alters; the tints of the body get darker, the body larger, the muzzle elongates, and the forehead appears to contract, and to be no longer an object of human resemblance. The disposition changes also, for the tame and amusing young learn a number of tricks and are full of fun; but this is succeeded by a look and behaviour of distrust and fierceness.
DOUC.
The Entellus Monkey is not found from Cape Comorin to the Himalayan Mountains, as is usually asserted; and Captain Hutton has shown that it is “entirely and absolutely restricted, within narrow limits, to the hot tropical plains of the north-western Gangetic provinces, where, from the degree of protection which its imputed ‘odour of sanctity’ is so well calculated to cast around it, as well as from the numbers in which it frequently occurs, it becomes a perfect nuisance in those parts of the country where the superstitious veneration for it most strongly prevails. In many places where the natives, from religious motives, are in the habit of feeding and protecting them, the roofs of the village huts are at certain hours of the day literally crowded with them, and the depredations committed in grain shops, gardens, and among neighbouring crops, are most miscreant-like.” The Entellus has been purposely introduced elsewhere, but is naturally confined to the right banks of the Ganges and Hooghly. They will not cross water of their own accord, and there appears to be a notion in the minds of the Hindoos that if there are males on one side and females on the other bank of the river, and plenty of boats between, the sexes will never mix, but that the males have great fights together. This is, however, one of the many fictions of those races who rarely study Nature. Some of these Monkeys were introduced to Kishunghur, in Lower Bengal, across the rivers, by devotees, and the offspring of one pair increased to such an extent as to become a perfect nuisance, so that in 1867 a large number of the native community presented a petition, praying that measures might be taken by the municipality to destroy some of the too numerous Monkeys that infested the station, causing fearful havoc among the fruit and grain. An order was issued, and 500 were killed. “There must be many thousands,” wrote a correspondent of the Delhi Gazette. This act was soon succeeded by another petition from a different section of the native population for the cancelment of the order to kill what they called their long deceased ancestors. The Entellus is not found in Africa, nor amongst the Himalayas; neither does it migrate from the upper to the lower districts of Bengal at special seasons. The Himalayan Semnopitheci are the Langoor and another—the Semnopithecus pileatus and Semnopithecus barbei.
It was stated formerly that the Entellus could be seen on Simla all the year through; but when the snow falls during the winter it seeks a warmer climate in the depths of the Khuds, returning again to the heights as it melts away. They may be seen, however, on a fine sunshiny day, even with the snow on the ground, leaping from tree to tree up and down a hill in Simla, which is at about an elevation of 8,115 feet. All this is a mistake; and it is the Langoor, not the Hoonuman, or Entellus, which does all this. It is the Langoor Monkey which Dr. Royle saw at an elevation of 9,000 feet during the summer months, and which Captain Hutton observed when on Hatu mountain, close to Simla, at an elevation of 10,650 feet, and at Simla during winter with snow four or five inches deep, and frost at night.
Whether the Entellus is found in the Deccan, and to the south, appears to be matter of doubt but probably the long-tailed Monkeys, seen in multitudes near houses or only in the forests, belong to a Semnopithecus closely allied in shape and ornamentation to it. One, the Semnopithecus Johnii, rarely leaves the forest lands, and is seen in Malabar.