BABOONS 33

manage to exist through the long, cold winters of the
Asiatic highlands is somewhat of a mystery.

There are monkeys all over America, from the Rio
Grande do Sul in 30° south latitude to Vera Cruz in
Mexico, where the black-handed spider species is
- found at an elevation of 2,000 feet on the slopes of
Orizaba, and of 4,000 feet in Oajaca. Using the
_term in its generally accepted sense, there are mon-
keys right across Asia, from the Hainan gibbon on
the east to the Arabian baboon on the west. This
_ Arabian baboon is better known on the other side
of the Red Sea as the sacred baboon of the old
_Egyptians, although it is now not found in -Egypt,
but further south in Abyssinia and the Soudan.
Sacred as it was, it would seem, at least occasionally,
to have been put to some use. On one of the old
bas-reliefs there is a fruit-bearing sycamore, in the
branches of which are three monkeys, easily recog-
nisable as Arabian baboons from their long snouts,
well-developed tails, and thickly haired shoulders and
necks ; on either side of the tree are two slaves, with
baskets laden with sycamore figs, and these baskets
they are filling with the figs handed down by the
baboons. It thus appears that the ancient Egyptians
had succeeded in training these animals to gather
fruits and hand them to their masters, precisely after
the fashion that the modern Malays are said to have
trained a langur in Sumatra to perform a similar
kind of ‘service, the fruit in the one case being
Sycamore figs and in the other cocoanuts. The
common long-tailed monkeys of the Egyptian sculp-
tures, it may be as well to note, were either guenons or

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