BABOON, CynocephaZus, a genus of the monkey family, or (see alroxitmv), and distinguished from all the rest of that family by the very elongated muzzle, which ter. urinates abruptly, and is pierced with nostrils at the end like that of a dog. The face has, indeed, a general resemblance to the face of a dog. The dentition agrees with that of the other apes or monkeys of the old world, to which the baboons are entirely confined, being only distinguished by the remarkable strength of the canine teeth. Baboons, like almost all the monkey family in the old world, have callosities upon the buttocks; and, like the greater part of them, they have cheek-pouches. The tail of some of the species is of considerable length, that of others is a mere tubercle, with an erect tuft of hairs. The physiognomy of all baboons is repulsive, and indicates the fierceness which strongly characterizes them, and in which they differ from monkeys in general: some of the larger ones are dreaded by the inhabitants of the country in which they are found; the danger to be apprehended from them being increased by the numbers in which they usually herd together. Their fore and bind legs are so proportioned, that they walk easily, and run swiftly on the ground; but, like all other quadruma nous animals, they climb trees and rocks with great agility. Their hair is long, forming a sort of mane on the upper parts. All of them are very susceptible of cold, and they seldom live long when removed from their native tropical countries. They feed chiefly on fruits and roots: some of them inhabit barren and stony places where scorpions abound, which they seize, adroitly deprive of the sting, and devour. They are very cunning, mischievous, and revengeful; troops of them sometimes enter a plantation, not merely to plunder, but apparently to amuse themselves by destroying whatever they can find; they seem, however, always to have sonic appointed to keep watch, and they make off with great rapidity on the first signal of alarm. When plundering, they cram their cheek-pouches before they begin to eat. These cheek-pouches are very capa cious: a B., kept in confinement, has been seen to put eight eggs into them at once, and "then to take out the eggs one by one, to break them at the end, and deliberately to suck their contents. The larger baboons are sometimes hunted by dogs where they have not trees to take refuge in; but a single dog, however powerful, cannot safely attack them; a B. will seize a dog by the hind legs, and whirl him round and round till he is stupefied. Baboons are not so easily domesticated as many kinds of monkey; however, they are not quite incapable of it when taken young. "Happy Jerry," a mandrill or rib-nose B., which was long a great object of attraction at Exeter Change, used to sit with great gravity in an arm-chair, awaiting orders, which lie obeyed with slowness and composure. He smoked tobacco, but did not seem much to relish if, and was rather induced to do it by a bribe of gin and water, for which his fondness was unquestionable.
As examples of baboons with tails of considerable length, may be mentioned the cliacma. or pig faced B., also called the ursine B. (a porcarius), a native of s. Africa; and the dog-faced B. (C. kamadryas), a native of Arabia, Persia, and the mountains of Abys sinia. The latter species, perhaps the only one known to the ancients, is often sculptured on the ancient monuments of Egypt, and it is supposed to have been the species of monkey to which divine honors were paid. Its body was frequently embalmed, and B. mummies are still found.—The chaema is one of the largest of the baboons, about the size of an English mastiff, and very much stronger; it is common on the mountains of Cape Colony, and in troops would be very formidable, but that they usually scam per out of the way, instead of attacking travelers, unless they are provoked. It is of a dark-brown color, with long shaggy hair. The tail is rather more than half the length of the body, and is terminated by a tuft of long black hair.
The short-tailed, or almost tailless baboons, far exceed their longer-tailed congeners in ugliness. Only two species are certainly known—the mandrill or rib-nose B. (U. mon), and the drill (C. leucophows), both natives of Guinea. The mandrill is the largest, fiercest, and most powerful of the whole genus. The colors of its fur are very fine, of a light olive brown above, and silvery gray beneath: but besides other things unpleasant to the sight, its face is peculiarly hideous; the cheek-bones in .the adult males being enormously swollen, so that the cheeks are protuberant to the size of a man's fist upon each side, and ribbed with blue, scarlet, and purple. In their native forests, man drills generally live in large troops, and are said to put to flight every other wild beast.
BA'BrIlif3, a Greek fabulist, who lived about the close of the Alexandrian age, or the beginning of the succeeding Roman-sophistic period, made a considerable collection -of Xsopian fables (see .Esor), which he turned into verse, in a natural and popular style. Several versions and transformations of these were made during the middle ages, and have come down to us under the name of ../Esop's Fables. Bentley, who, in his Dissertatio de Babrio was the first to recognize in these fables of tEsop the original work of R., endeavored to restore portions of the verses, and pointed out other fragment of the genuine B. in other quarters. A few fables were added from manuscripts by Plain, Kornis, and Schneider, and all that was known at the time was collected by Knoche (Halle, 1835). At last, in 1842, a Greek of the name of 3Iinoides Mivas, employed by the French government to explore the convents of the east, discovered a manuscript with 123 hitherto unknown fables of B., a copy of which he made and brought to Paris, where they were published in 1844. The best edition is that by 1845).