THE MONSTER-APE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XVII, 28 April 1894, Page 400

THE MONSTER-APE.

BY

FELIX L. OSWALD.

The great pine-forests of eastern Norway are hannted by a night-bird known to the natives as the harfang, or harekiller, and said to be bolder than the eagles of the neighbouring rocks, and to attack any hunter who would venture to disturb its feasts or approach the hiding place of its nestlings. That fighting owl—the only man defying species of its tribe, can hardly be considered a greater anomaly than the aggressive mandrill, the ‘dog-headed monster’ (cynocephalus mormon) of the ancient naturalist'. Pliny enumerates some twenty-five different kinds of four-handed creatures ; now, the Sunda Islands alone are known to contain more than a hundred species, and Africa about two hundred, but of that large number, only three, the orang, the gorilla, and the larger baboons seek safety in resistance, rather than in flight, and the mandrill alone habitually uses his strength for offensive purposes of warfare. The stories about the gratuitons ferocity of the gorilla were conclusively exploded by Mr Win wood Reade, who proves that the hairy man of the woods is as shy as a fawn, and loves solitude so much better than garden fruit that he rarely leaves the shady depths of the forest. The orang and the chimpanzee, too, are content to enjoy their freedom at a safe distance from the tool-making tyrant of earth ; but Doctor Brehm, Nachtigall, and Sir Samuel Baker all agree that the mandrill raids the settlements of the agricultural negroes in broad daylight, and fiercely resists interference, unless the defenders of their fields should enforce their protest by the argument of a large numerical majority. Dogs he attacks at night. Doctor Brehm saw a pair of mandrills rout a mastiff that had fought leopards and hyenas, bnt seemed panic stricken at sight of the male freebooter. That sight, indeed, justifies the specific name of the monster-ape. From the eyes down to the muzzle his long snout is ribbed with parallel wrinkles an inch thick, and dyed of a bright scarlet that contrasts strangely with the livid blue of the intermediate furrows. His eyebrows are beetled, and surrounded by puckered tufts of hair, that give the face the appearance of a perpetual frown, an effect still heightened by the bristling side whiskers that stick upward and mingle with the grotesquely erect bristles of the scalp. His jaws are of tremendous size, even in proportion to the big head, which, in the old males, seems to form a full fourth of the total bulk of the body. Canine teeth, two inches long, characterise the mandrill as a connecting link between the apes and the dog-like carnivora ; and his habits, in a state of nature, seem, in fact, to indicate his preference for a decidedly mixed, i.e., more than half, animal diet. Like his relatives, the baboons of the desert, the mandrill is apt to remedy a failure of vegetable crops by a diligent hunt after insects, but he also catches river crabs and is ravenously fond of eggs and young birds.

Japanese prize-fighters consider it a shame to decline a combat with any beasts of their own weight, bnt I have often wondered if they would like to try conclusions with a

fall-grown mandrill. Their quarterstaffs would be wrenched away and flung out of reach in the first round, and their wrestling tricks would avail but little against the advantage of superior wrist power. A mandrill cannot raise himself to a height of much more than five feet, and his hind legs are comparatively weak, but his arms would create a sensation in a New Orleans prize ring. They are joined to massive shoulders that make the whole breast project and give the brute a sort of leonine strut, and the muscles from the elbow to the wrinkles of the wrist would decide an international trial of strength in a few minutes. At Mgomba, on the npper Gold Coast, Professor Nachtigall was one morning aroused by the shouts of his negro landlord, and hastening toward the orchard, came just in time to see a mandrill dispose of a couple of large dogs that had tackled him at the bidding of their master. Close to the corner of a palisade-fence he had backed into the bushes, trying to effect his retreat into the wilderness of the outer jungle ; but finding the dogs too close to bis heels, he suddenly wheeled about, and grabbing one of his aggressors by the hind leg, he whirled him about till his bones creaked, then sent him spinning through the weeds and made a rush for his companion, who, however, turned tail in time to save his anatomy. Bang 1 went a shot that knocked the splinters out of the pickets, and the marauder turned as if he was about to repay the affront by a charge on the house, but presently changed his mind and leaped the fence with the agility of a New York bank-cashier. One of the dogs was crippled, and the other had crawled under the house, where he dodged about till his raging master had relinquished the idea of a pursuit. Young mandrills eke out a defect of strength by a good deal of cunning, and a half-grown specimen, sold with the special recommendations of a New York pet-dealer, got me into several scrapes by making bis escape from cages that seemed stout enough to hold a young bear. Wooden frontbars be would gnaw to pieces the minute his room-mates were out of sight, and stout pieces of rod-iron he loosened in a way which nobody was at first able to explain, till we found out that he bent them for hours in two different directions, the bottom end to the left and the top to the right, till he could finally wrench them out of their sockets. Once in the room, he would commit the greatest amount of actual damage that could possibly be accomplished by a creature of his size, and no boodle aiderman wriggling out by a technical quibble could have surpassed bis talent for making his escape through a mere cranny. In wandering about the house, he twice managed to climb into a club library, where there would have been no limit to his chances of mischief since a bright fire was generally kept blazing in an open grate. Once he had already demolished half a dozen books and commenced on the seventh, when a newsboy, coming in with the evening paper, surprised him in flagranti, and soon brought a large posse to the rescue. Bobby jumped from shelf to shelf into a boxful of old journals, where he stood at bay with the pluck of a young catamount, and was overpowered only after everyone of his assailants had been vicionsly bitten. Some of the bites were not very deep, but they were all placed, with a good judgment of chances for permanent injury, abont the neck, wrists, and fingers. Bobby had, indeed, the courage of bis species, and could never be trusted in a cage with other monkeys. At the slightest symptom

of disrespect, he cuffed them left and right, and at dinner snatched away the public mess-dish into his private corner, ignoring the shrieks of his victims with the tang fr >id of a Pennsylvania monopolist. Cold weather made hi a more social, and in frosty nights, he would, now and the i, utter a moaning whoop to express bis longing for the so iety of a fellow prisoner whom, the day before, he had almost teased out of his life. The adult mandrill is less fond of pranks, bnt be has an emphatic will of his own. and in disappointment his anger rises to a frightful height of passion. A veteran specimen known as * Old Jerry ’ was for years kept in the Surrey Zoological Gardens, and once had the honour to dine at Windsor in the presence of George the Fourth, who tried to cure his spleen - whist failing—by what the conrt wits described as an occasional resort to * four-handed g ime.' Jerry’s four hands lost no time in disposing of all dainties offered, and were stretched out for an inviting-looking pickle, which his majesty, on second thought, deemed it best to withdraw. In a moment the complacently munching visitor -was transformed into a raging demon shaking his cage and snatching the royal coat-tails with a screech which actually frightened his host into a surrender of the disputed prize—the only time, he used to say, that he had been bullied into compliance with anybody's importunities. Jerry got his pickle, but like other independents, had to pay for his triumph with the lasting disfavour of the court. Of all the larger quadrumana the mandrill alone has survived the climate of Eastern North America for many years. The one in Philadelphia was imported in 1879 ; the patriarch of the troop kept in the Cincinnati Zoo has strutted around the same cage since 1876. He has survived cigar-stumps, ladies’ brooches and several life-and-death combats with a confederacy of his cage mates, and his enormons strength of constitution may enable him to defy the vicissitudes of the climate for many years to come.