The question of the colouring and ornamentation of Monkeys will again be noticed in the summary at the close of the description of the Quadrumana, and it is therefore only now necessary to remark that the most grotesque-looking and ferocious Mandrill is especially beautiful in the eyes of his partner, who, with humble colours and softened looks, admires her fractious spouse. His colours glow with love and flame under the influence of passion, and probably no more curious-looking piece of living polychrome was ever seen than “Jerry,” at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, when he got in a rage after drinking gin and water. “Jerry” was old and had gained all his ornaments, but had lost his levity, fur, and amiability. Broderip writes of him: “He liked the good things of Mandrill life, but would not put up with its troubles. He was a glutton, and ferocious in the extreme. Most kindly he would receive your nuts, and at the same time, if possible, would scratch or pinch your fingers, and then snarl and grunt in senseless anger. He would sit in a little arm-chair, and would wrap himself up in a blanket, knowing what was coming, the bribe being either a cup of tea, which he took, as people used to say, ‘quite like any Christian,’ or, what was much nicer in his eyes, a glass of weak grog and a pipe. If he was disturbed in his enjoyment he was not pleasant, and if a shower of nuts came in upon his feast, especially if it occurred after the gin and water, he came out in his true colours. Cramming the nuts into his mouth, and stowing them away rapidly in his cheek-pouches, this giving an unusual size to his jaws, he would howl and march about, snarling and grunting. His little eyes glared, his nose and cheeks became swollen, and their colours most vivid. His hair stood out, and he walked as it were on the very tips of his fingers and toes, presenting every now and then vermilion behind, which a distinguished French anatomist has said was not without elegance.”
He was under the control of the keeper, who had, however, to take care that he was not bitten unawares, for “Jerry” was deceitful and treacherous in the extreme. It is said that he once dined in the presence of royalty, and that he was one of the many higher animals who were invited to dine George the Fourth at Windsor when his Majesty required novel amusements and unusual excitement. Doubtless he behaved himself, and contributed as much, and probably more, than any guest, to the royal enjoyment, and he appears to have enjoyed his hashed venison himself. There was no mistake about his enjoying his pipe, for he smoked as slowly and sedately as the gravest of his visitors at the Zoological Gardens.
Had “Jerry” been let alone, and had he remained in Africa at liberty, doubtless he would have in time headed his troops as patriarch and watchman, and would have led them in many an expedition against the fields of corn and the plantations of fruit-trees. For the Mandrills, in a state of nature, behave much like the other Baboons. They are, however, very fond of insects, large and small, inoffensive and venomous, and they lift up stone after stone in their search for them, enjoying Scorpions as much as anything else. Probably they can throw a stone, and this, coupled with their aspect, their assembling in troops to defy the farmers and watchers, and their attacking Dogs without mercy, has given them the bad character in the eyes of the negro race which they appear to have had from time immemorial. It is said that they annoy the Elephants so much that they will not remain in the same district; but it is doubtful whether the great proboscidean could flourish where the Mandrill cares most to live, for he is neither a forest nor a plain Ape, but, like the rest of the Baboons, travels far and wide from his rocky home. They associate in bands like the other Cynocephali, and behave as they do when plundering; but it appears to be true that the Mandrills are often found in small numbers, and that then they devote themselves to hunting for insects rather than to predatory excursions. Very little is known about their habits in the wild state in Africa, and it is evident that they are avoided rather than watched by the Blacks.
MANDRILL.
Although, from the scantiness of reliable information regarding their habits when living at liberty, the Mandrill is of no great interest to the ordinary naturalist, still, the comparative anatomist, having had the advantage of dissecting both tame and wild specimens, considers this Monkey, which is ordinarily placed last in the scheme of the classification of the Old World kinds, of very great interest. For, placed low down in the Monkey scale, and remote from the man-like Apes, it approaches the flesh-eating animals, or Carnivora, in many points of its construction, and, if not exactly, still approximately, and in their general character.
YOUNG MANDRILL. (From a Sketch at the Zoological Gardens.)
The back-bone, for instance, although its curves recall those of man, is eminently that of the brute, that is to say, it greatly resembles that of many kinds of quadrupeds. The pieces, or vertebræ of the back (dorsal) have, of course, spines, but they do not slope backwards; on the contrary, those of the last three are directed forward; and the loin, or lumbar vertebræ, are six or seven in number, and there is an arrangement by which their general strength is increased, by a forking of the joint-bearing processes which unite them together by the formation of a bony structure. These peculiarities connect the Mandrill, whose common position is on all-fours, with the inferior quadrupeds, for they exist in them. Then there is no true sacrum bone, but two or three back pieces (sacral vertebræ), form a short conical sacrum—one attached separately to the hip-bone on either side. This is like the arrangement in the Carnivora. The hip-bones are long, narrow, and deeply excavated behind, or rather externally; the front of the bony girdle of the loins (the pelvis) is long; and the bones (the ischial) on which the Mandrill sits are very broad and semicircular. Now, these three apparently simple matters of anatomical detail are not only of interest to those who recognise the analogies of the same parts in different animals, for they relate to means, to ends, and commend themselves to the consideration of ordinary observers. The shape of the hip-bone on each side, so unlike that of man and the man-like Apes, perhaps the Gibbons excepted, depends upon the relation of the muscles which move the hind-quarters and their bones, and the hollow in the hip is well filled up by those which pass backwards to the thigh. The position of those muscles assists the motion of running on all-fours and of springing. The length of the girdle (the front of the pelvis or pubic bones) relates to the dimensions of the digestive and reproductive organs. The large size of the haunch-bones, or rather of their ends, is due to their being covered by the great pad-like hard parts, or callosities, on which the creature sits very constantly. Instead of having the soft muscles so familiar to the human anatomist well and largely developed there, it has this mass of fat cellular tissue and coloured skin attached to a curved bone, the whole being a most comfortable seat, and very frequently used by this restless Monkey. The bones of the tail are few in number, for it is short, but the muscles which wag the organ in Monkeys, in which it is of some size, are still present at its root. There is a capacious chest in the Mandrill, but its bones, or rather the ribs which partly form it are, as it were, pressed in at the sides, so that it is not round like that of the higher Apes, but rather long and flat at the sides, and thus resembles the chest of the Semnopitheci on the one hand, and that of the lower four-footed animals on the other. It has good lungs and a strong heart, and the intestines, stomach, and liver do not occupy as much space relatively as in the genera of Monkeys already described.
There is a singular approach in the conformation of the fore hand to the paw of the Carnivora, and a great departure, so far as resemblance is concerned, from that of man in the Mandrill. It is produced by the relative length of the bones which unite those of the wrist to those of the fingers; for these so-called metacarpal bones, four in number, leaving out that of the thumb, are of the same length, and not unequal, as in the higher Apes and in man. Therefore, the middle finger of the Mandrill is not longer than the others, and hence the peculiarity of the hand as a whole. This is noticed in some Macaques to a certain extent.