CROWNED MONKEY.
The skull of the Douc has large and open orbits, faint side crests, and faint crests passing from the ear over the occiput. The face is small in relation to the brain-case, and the shape of the whole differs greatly from that of the Troglodytes in this respect. The lower jaw is angular behind, and the portion (the ascending branch or ramus) which leads up to the joint is very straight. The teeth in it are of the same number as those of the Gibbons; but the last grinder is long, and has a very distinct heel-like back, point, or cusp. The other four points, or cusps, are placed two in front and two behind them, those in front are united by a cross ridge, then comes a hollow across the tooth, and then the back pairs, which are united by a ridge, and then the heel follows. The other crushing molar teeth have four cusps, in pairs, each pair having a common cross ridge, and the pairs are separated by a furrow. The teeth are close together, and the first false molar is smaller than the second. The upper jaw projects a little, and the front jaw-bone (pre-maxillary) remains distinct. Its crushing teeth have four points, or cusps, but the outline of the teeth is not straight at the sides, but doubly curved, so that the entrance of the curves is between the cusps, and it corresponds to the furrow. All this gives a very animal look to the teeth.
It must be remembered that these teeth are used more for crushing soft vegetable matters than for cracking nuts, and things which can be stowed away in a cheek-pouch and devoured at leisure. Hence the difference between the teeth of these and of the Macaques.
THE CEYLON LOW-COUNTRY WANDEROO—THE WHITE-BEARDED MONKEY.[34]
“When observed in their native wilds,” writes Sir James Emerson Tennent, “a party of twenty or thirty of these creatures are generally busily engaged in the search for berries and buds. They are seldom to be seen on the ground, and then only when they have descended to recover seeds or fruit that have fallen at the foot of their favourite trees. In their alarm, when disturbed, their leaps are prodigious, but generally speaking their progress is made not so much by leaping as by swinging from branch to branch, using their powerful arms alternately, and when baffled by distance, flinging themselves obliquely so as to catch the lower boughs of an opposite tree, the momentum acquired by their descent being sufficient to cause a rebound, that sends then again upwards, till they can grasp a higher branch, and thus continue their headlong flight.”
PRIAMUS MONKEY. (After Tennent.)
This Monkey is very active and intelligent, and is not very mischievous, and, indeed, is much less so than the other Monkeys of Ceylon. In captivity it is remarkable for the gravity of its behaviour, and for an air of melancholy in its expression and movements, which is completely in character with its snowy beard and venerable aspect. Its disposition is gentle and confiding; it is in the highest degree sensible of kindness, and eager for endearing attentions, uttering a low plaintive cry when its sympathies are excited. It is particularly cleanly in its habits when domesticated, and spends much of its time in cleaning its fur, and carefully divesting it of the least particle of dust.
The Nestor is about sixteen inches in length (the body and head), and the tail measures twenty inches. The prevailing colour is a deep grey, with a slight tinge of brown, becoming paler on the back of the neck and on the tail, where the previous tinge is more marked. The hands and lower part of the limbs are nearly black. Its lips, chin, and whiskers are nearly pure white, the tips of the latter, which are brushed backwards, being grey. There is a stiff ridge of black hairs over the eyebrows, and they are about an inch and a half in length. The moderate length of the hairs, the light colour and the white of the lower sides of the face, are distinctive. It inhabits the southern and western provinces of Ceylon, and is found at a higher elevation than even 1,300 feet.