In their native mountains the ordinary food of the Baboons is berries and bulbous roots, but in the vicinity of human habitations they make incursions into the cultivated fields and gardens, and destroy a still greater quantity of grain and fruits than they carry away with them. In well-inhabited countries where they are likely to meet with resistance, their predatory incursions are usually made during the night, and travellers assure us that, taught by experience of the risks to which they expose themselves during such expeditions, they place sentinels upon the surrounding trees and heights to give them timely warning of the approach of danger ; but in wilder and more solitary districts, where the thinness of the population and the want of fire-arms place them on some degree of equality with the inhabitants, they make their forays in the open day, and dispute with the husbandman the fruits of his labour. "I have myself," says Pearce, in his ` Life and Adventures in Abyssinia,' " seen an assembly of large monkeys [baboons] drive the keepers from the fields of grain, in spite of their slings and stones, till several people went from the village to their assistance, and even then they only retired slowly; seeing that the men had no guns." Some travellers even assert that if the troop happens to be surprised in the act of pillaging, the senti nels pay with their lives for their neglect of the general safety ; but however this may be, it is certain that individuals are frequently met with which exhibit marks of ill-usage from their companions, and which even sometimes appear to have been expelled from their society. Others assure us that the troop sometimes forms a long chain extending from the vicinity of their ordinary habitation to the garden or field which they happen to be engaged in plundering, and that the produce of their theft is pitched from hand to band till it reaches its destination in the mountains. By this means they are enabled to carry off a much larger booty than if every individual laboured for his own peculiar benefit ; but notwithstanding this attention to the general ihterest, each takes care before retiring to fill his eheek-pouches with the most choice fruits or grains which he can procure, and also, if not likely to be pursued, to carry off quantities in his hands. After these expeditions the whole troop retire to the mountains to enjoy their booty. They likewise search with avidity for the nests of birds, and suck the eggs; but if there be young, they kill them and destroy the nest ; as, notwithstanding the evident approximation of their organisation and appetites to carni vorous animals, they are never known to touch a living prey in a state of nature, and even in captivity will eat no flesh but what has been thoroughly boiled or roasted. In this state we have seen various baboons enjoy their mutton-bone and pick it with apparent satisfac tion ; but it was evidently an acquired habit, like that of drinking porter and smoking tobacco, which they had been taught by the example of their keepers.
Of all the Quadrumana the Baboons are the most frightfully ugly. Their small eyes deeply sunk beneath huge projecting eyebrows, their low contracted forehead, and the very diminutive size of their cranium compared with the enormous development of the face and jaws, give them a fierce and malicious look, which is still further heightened by their robust and powerful make, and by the appearance of the enormous teeth which they do not fail to display upon the slightest provocation. The fierceness and brutality of their character and manners correspond with the expression of their physiognomy. These characters are most strongly displayed by the males ; but it is more especially when, in addition to their ordinary disposition, they are agitated by the passion of love or jealousy that their natural habitudes carry them to the most furious and brutal excess. In captivity they are thrown into the greatest agitation at the appearance of young females. It is a common practice among itinerant showmen to excite the natural jealousy of their baboons by caressing or offering to kiss the young females who resort to their exhibitions, and the sight never fails to excite in these animals a degree of rage bordering upon frenzy. On one occasion a large baboon of the species which inhabits the Cape of Good Hope (Cynocephalus porcarius) escaped from his place of confinement in the Jardin des Plantes' at Paris, and far from showing any disposition to return to his cage, severely wounded two or three of the keepers who attempted to recapture him. After many ineffectual attempts to induce him to return quietly, they at length hit upon a plan which was successfuL There was a small grated window at the back part of his den, at which one of the keepers appeared in company with the daughter of the superintendent, whom he appeared to kiss and caress within view of the animal. No sooner did the baboon witness this familiarity than he flew into the cage with the greatest fury, and endeavoured to unfasten the grating of the window which separated him from the object of his jealousy. Whilst employed in this vain attempt the keepers took the opportunity of fastening the door and securing him once more in his place of confinement. Nor is this a solitary instance of the influence which women can exert over the passions of these savage animals : generally untractable and incorrigible whilst under the management of men, it usually happens that baboons are most effectually tamed and led to even more than ordinary obedience in the hands of women, whose attentions they even appear to repay with gratitude and affection. Travellers sometimes speak of the danger which women run who reside in the vicinity of the situations which these animals inhabit, and affirm that the negresses on the coast of Guinea are occasionally kidnapped by the baboons, and carried off to their fastnesses : we are even assured that certain of these women have lived among the baboons for many years, and that they were prevented from escaping by being shut up in caves in the mountains, where however they were plentifully fed, and in ether respects treated with great kindness. It is to be observed however
that these accounts rest upon authority which is by no means unex ceptionable. Credible and well-informed modern travellers do not relate them, and even their older and more credulous predecessors give them only from hearsay.
In addition to the mental and physical characters already mentioned, the Baboons, besides the great development of their canine teeth, are distinguished by having a fifth tubercule upon the posterior molar of the under jaw, in which respect they differ from the Apes and Cercopitheci, and resemble the Macaci and Semnopitheci. They are furnished with large callosities and capacious cheek pouches, and their tails, always shorter than those of the Maeacks and Monkeys, are carried erect at the root, and then hang pendant perpendicularly, like that of a horse which has not been truncated. Those species which have very short tails carry them upright and erect. The bones of their cheeks also are protuberant and form large swellings on each side of the nose; and though this character is more strongly marked in the Mandrill and Drill than in the other species, yet all exhibit it in a greater or less degree. It is only since the labours of Messrs. Geoffrey and F. Cuvier have developed the true generic characters of the different groups which compose the family of Quadrumana, that we have become acquainted with the geographical distribution of these animals, and the habitats of the different genera. We have thus learned that the Quadrumana of the African continent are as distinct from those Asia in their zoological characters as they are in the localities which they inhabit ; in fact, among upwards of fifty species of Simiadw belonging to the Old World there are only two known instances of an Asiatic genus occurring in Africa, or of an African genus occurring in Asia. One of these instances is even doubtful, since the animal to which it refers, the Common Magot or Barbary Ape, though generally considered as a Macack, is in reality an inter mediate species between that genus and the Baboons, which it resembles equally in its habitat as it does in its powerful and muscular frame, and in its general habits and character, and from which it only differs in the comparative shortness of its face and the less truncated form of its nose. These, to be sure, are very essential characters in the true Baboons ; but in all departments of zoology we find intermediate species, which partake as it were equally of the characteristic forms and organisation of two or even three conterminous genera, and which it is often impossible to include in either without a considerable relaxation in the strict import of their respective definitions. The other instance to which we have alluded regards a real species of Baboon, the Cynocephalus Jiamadryas of authors, which is found in Asia and Africa, and which forms the only indisputable instance of any quadrumanous animal being common to both these continents. In other respects the Baboons are a strictly African genus. They inhabit all the great mountain ranges of that continent, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, and arc capable of supporting a much lower degree of temperature than any of the other Quadrumana. The lofty mountains of Samen in Abys sinia, and the bleak and desolate range of the Sneeuwbergen in South Africa, are both tenanted by numerous troops of these animals, which appear to prefer the more rigorous climate of these elevated regions to the hot and sultry forests of the lower plains. Fischer enumerates eleven different species of baboons, but it is evident that some of those which he describes are the females or young of other species; and in fact the most judicious naturalists, those who describe from their own original observations, do not reckon more than five or six. The following are very distinctly marked, and have been universally admitted :— 1. C. porcarius (Desmarest), the Chacma. The colour of this species is a uniform dark brown, almost black, mixed throughout with a dark green shade, deepest on the head and along the ridge of the back, and paler on the anterior part of the shoulders and on the flanks. The hair over the whole body is long and shaggy, more particularly on the neck and shoulders of the males, where it forms a distinct mane ; each hair is of a light gray colour for some distance from the root, and afterwards annulated throughout its entire length, with distinct rings alternately black and dark green, sometimes though but rarely intermixed with a few of a lighter and yellowish shade. The green predominates on the head more than on other parts ; the face and ears are naked, as are likewise the palms of the hands and soles of the feet ; the interior surfaces of the arms and thighs are but thinly covered with hair, which is long and of a uniform dark-brown colour ; the hair on the toes is short, bristly, and uniformly black ; the neck and shoulders of the male are furnished with a mane of long shaggy hair, which is wanting in the females and young; and the cheeks of both sexes have small whiskers directed backwards, and of a grayish colour. The tail is rather more than half the length of the body, and is termi nated by a tuft of long black hair ; the skin of the hands, face, and ears, is of a very dark violet-blue colour, with a paler ring surrounding each eye ; the whole of the upper eyelids are white, as in the Manga bey (Cercopithecus fuliginosus); the nose projects a little beyond the upper lip, the nostrils are separated by a small depression or rut, as in the dog and other carnivorous animals, and the callosities are less strongly marked than in most other species of this genus. In the adult animal the muzzle is extremely prolonged in comparison with the skull, which is proportionately contracted 11111 flattened : the young on the contrary have the region of the brain much larger in proportion to the length of the face, the head considerably rounder, and in form resembling that of the adult Monkeys (Cercopithect).