Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra25271894roya).pdf/50

 rapidly and at a higher elevation can detect fruit, if coloured, at a great distance and can speedily make their way to it, and that besides many of the fruit-eating mammals are nocturnal and, therefore, colour would be useless to them in the dark. Berries and drupes are eaten whole (except for the skin) by the monkeys, if they are small, like Nephelium, Zisyphus. In these fruits the sweet pulp often adheres strongly to the stone making it so slippery that it is almost impossible to avoid swallowing the latter. Zisyphus calophyllus, a common creeper with small globose fruit, and the Mata-kuching (Nephelium malaiense) are good instances of this form of drupe. In Baccaurea motleyana, Hook, the Rambai, the seeds, of which there are three in a fruit inclosed in sweet pulp, are very thin, and are quite troublesome to eject.

The Malays and the Sakais in eating these fruits generally swallow the seeds even of such large drupes as the Rambutan, and I have seen in the deserted encampments of the Sakais in Pahang germinating seeds of the Rambutan which had been swallowed and had passed through their bodies. The Malays indeed say that this is the most wholesome and pleasant way of eating these fruits.

There are two forms of the fruit of the Polessan (Nephelium mutabile), in one of which the flesh adheres tightly to the stone, and in the other it is firmer, and readily breaks away, and can be nibbled off easily. If a monkey ate the cling-stone variety the seed would slip down its throat, while from the firmer-fleshed free-stone variety it would nibble the flesh and throw the stone away. In drupes of this kind it is essential. that they should not be too large for an animal to swallow, and there is a decided advantage in the sweet pulp being very thin as it is thus more slippery and cannot be detached by biting. Many large and heavy fruits like those of the wild mangoes (Mangifera cæsia, lagenifera, etc.) and Careya are carried by the monkeys who gather them to a convenient perch to be eaten, and in doing so they frequently drop them, so that one finds large fruits partially eaten often at considerable distances from the parent tree. But the weight of these fruits has also another advantage, by preventing their lodging in the tangled