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Show 1905.] MR. R. I. POCOCK OX A HAIXAX GIBBOX. 175 Again, Pousargues * believed hainanus to be established upon a specimen of the same species as the type of II. nasutus, from Tonkin. This belief was also based upon resemblance in colour. Nothing else is known of the characters of nasutus except the alleged presence of a " fine and delicate little nose," whence the name was derived. But since hainanus is not distinguishable from other Gibbons by the fineness and delicacy of its nose, judgment on the synonymy suggested by Pousargues must be suspended until the type of nasutus has been re-examined and described. Trouessart, who may have seen the type, gives nasutus the rank of a subspecies of the Hainan form. No further justification need, I think, be sought for retaining the name hainanus for the subject-matter of these remarks. Description of the Species. Face, ears, palms of hands, soles of feet, and skin black, the face with a slightly brownish tinge; iris and exposed portion of eyeball blackish. Colour of hair either uniformly black, with shining tips, or grey, the roots of the hair being tinged with fawn or washed-out brown, their exposed portion shining with silver-grey lustre in reflected light, but of a more stone-grey in direct light. During the change from black to grey, the coloration is a mixture of the two, the black or the grey predominating according to the nearness of the time of observation to the incipience or completion of the change. On the crown of the head a median longitudinal black patch with ill-defined edges and extending posteriorly as a narrow evanescent stripe persists. A few scanty hairs upon the penultimate phalanx of the fingers and toes and the long hair on the brow also remain black. The hair on the body and limbs is longish, soft, and thick, but depressed and smooth. It is not woolly in the sense that the hair of our young Lar Gibbon is woolly, i. e. much resembling a Sheep's fleece ; nor does it exhibit the fine and silky woolliness of the skin of II. agilis in the British Museum. On the forehead and crown of the head the hair is shorter, fine, and close, and in the living specimen grows somewhat a la Pompadour, being erect on the crown and almost porrect on the forehead, so that the head has the appearance of being very much higher than in our living example of the Hoolock (//. hoolock) and in adult skins of II. lar, II. pileatus, and IT. leuciscus in the British Museum, in which the hair lies smoothly backwards. The difference may be briefly expressed by saying that in our Hainan Gibbon the hair looks as if it had been brushed up, whereas in the others it looks as if it had been * Bull. Mus. Paris, 1900, p. 272. Pousargues gave A. Milne-Edwards tlie credit of naming nasutus. Milne-Edwards, however, published no description of the species when the name was quoted (Le Naturaliste, 1884, p. 497). Hence it seems that Kunckel d'Herculais, who first associated the name with definite characters, must be regarded as the author (Science et Nat. ii. no. 33, p. 86, 1884). |
