The Drill is smaller than the Mandrill, and has a short stumpy tail, occasionally two inches in length, covered with bristly hair, and ending in a brush. The colour of the hair is greener than that of the Mandrill, and underneath it is whiter and more silvery, whilst there is much light-brown hair on the upper parts of the limbs. It has whiskers, which are brushed back, and a small orange-coloured beard; moreover, the general tint of the skin beneath the hair is dark-blue, and the dinginess is relieved by scarlet callosities.
The Baboons of Africa certainly lead very exceptional lives for Monkeys. They are the Apes of the rock and plain, and they would be out of place, on account of their method of moving and their general habits, in the dense tropical forests and swampy jungle. Their structure and general conformation are especially suited for their mode of life, and their courage, numbers, and instincts avail them against their common enemies—enemies which the contented dwellers in the woods, such as the Troglodytes, have not. Probably the Baboons are of vast antiquity, for the age of the African hills is great, even geologically speaking. The tree disappears and the woods die away sooner or later, whilst the rock merely crumbles. Certainly the life of the Gorilla and other great Apes is intimately associated and connected with the life of the great trees and the duration of the vast woods of Equatorial Africa. Destroy them, and the days of the Troglodytes would be at an end. But the rocks and hills are not so transient as the woods, and the Baboon will exist long after the higher Apes are extinct. Did he exist before them, and is he the link between them and a still less monkey-like animal? These are questions whose import has not escaped the active mind of one of the most eminent of anatomists, for Gratiolet believes in the descent of the Gorilla from the Baboon, and of course that the last preceded the first in time.
The possibility of the descent of the Cynocephali from a flesh-eater only rests upon the resemblance of some of the structures of the Mandrill, for instance, to those of some of the Carnivora. The dog-like appearance of the Baboon of course depends upon its long snout and jaws, but these are very different in their anatomy and construction from those of the Dog. The Cynocephali (Baboons) are the lowest of the Old World Monkeys, but their next-of-kin in the downward classification are not now existing. They are more remote from the Lemurs, which come next below as Quadrumana, than they are from the great Apes.
Hence the Baboon stands very much by himself. He may have possibly very distant relationship with some long-lost forms—creatures which lived geological ages since, and in which the ferocity of the Carnivora was combined with some of the structures of the Monkey; or—and this is the more probable—he may have once lived as a denizen of the forest, and the symbol of Thoth may really have merited the name of Hamadryas. The forest may have succumbed to changes in the physical geography, and the survivors of the slow extinction of the trees had to lead different lives and assume other habits. The Cercopitheci (the Guenons) may have been the old forest Monkeys, and the Macaques, those half Baboons, may be their modified descendants in a line which led to the true Baboon. If this be true, the dog-like characters of the Cynocephali were given by nature during their progressive alterations from the condition of Tree Monkeys.
THE BLACK BABOON.[70]
There is a small Baboon which is very interesting to the student of the distribution of animals over the surface of the globe and to geologists. It is jet-black in colour, there being hardly a trace of dark-brown in its long hair, and hence it has been called the Black Baboon, or Cynocephalus niger.
These animals are found in considerable numbers in the great island of Celebes, situated in the sea between Australia and the mainland of Asia, and they have been introduced by man into the Philippine Islands and Batchian. They are, therefore, extra-African, but they are true short-tailed Baboons, nevertheless.
The Black Baboon, when full grown, is about two feet in length, and the tail measures about an inch. Its face and neck are not covered, but all the rest of the body, the head, and the limbs, have a long black fur, and the hair of the top of the head runs up into a tall long half-curl. The face is long and very melancholy-looking, and the cheeks are smaller, but coloured black on either side of the nose. But the nose does not extend, like that of a Dog, quite to the end of the muzzle, for the creature has a decided upper lip, and the division or septum of the nostrils is long and rather broad, so that these openings look downwards and outwards. The seat has a scarlet tint, and the tail is a mere knob.
