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Show 1867.] RANGE OF SEMNOPITHECUS ENTELLUS. 945 numerous community of Bengal Hoonoomauns appears to consist of males only of different ages, from half-grown or less to adults ; and the natives of that part say that furious battles are frequent among them ; whereas the great majority are females in the other locality that has been spoken of, and it is understood that each male attached to a flock of females allows no other male, even half-grown, to approach them. Though a stream navigable for boats passes through the jungle inhabited by the latter community, or probably series of communities, with plenty of lloonoomauns on each side of it, the natives of the place informed me that they had never known one to pass across, or, in fact, to enter the water"*. There is in this an abundance of credulity on the one side, and of fiction on the other! Cross the water they will not-a proof that Nature restricts them to the range I have herein pointed out. But if all the males remain on one side of a stream and all the females on the other, as this statement would seem to imply, how does Mr. Blyth propose to carry on the great work of Nature? The story is evidently one of those tales in which native shortsightedness is clearly apparent; nay, it contradicts itself; for Mr. Blyth states that in one flock the majority were females, thus admitting the presence of several males, and yet alleges that each male attached to a flock will allow no other male, not even half-grown, to approach the females. The fact appears to be that the troop on one side has evidently been introduced to the locality, while the other is on its proper side, and is prevented hy the stream from crossing to the bank where Nature never intended it to reside. The entire account as given by the natives is opposed to the habits and manners of the genus; for at Bindrabun, Muttra, and various other places where I have seen them the males and females are promiscuously intermixed ; and although quarrels will sometimes occur, yet as a general rule the whole community lives together in peacefulness. With the Ilimalayan species the custom is the same, the males and females remaining together at all seasons, even when the females have young ones at the breast, or are followed by yearlings. The only approach to a separation at any season consists in the males of a troop keeping together and the females doing the same if there are very young ones among them ; but the two divisions form but one troop ; and I am not even yet quite sure that such a trifling division really takes place. According to the same authority we learn that Dr. Jerdon, of the Madras Army, has stated of the Entellus that, on the western side of India, " it is peculiar to the dense forests of the western coast. It abounds at the base of the Nilghirries, in Malabar, Travancore, &c, living in small troops, and has the usual loud cry of the others of this genus. The true Entellus," he adds, " I have found chiefly in the neighbourhood of large towns, frequenting groves-also, however, in forest in Goomsoor, and open jungle in the Deccan." Colonel Sykes speaks of the animal as being common in the Western Ghauts, where the Mahrattas call it Makar, and do not venerate it. * J. A. S. B. vol. xii. p. IU. |