Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/58

32 without my seeing him, I was always notified of the fact by a series of barks, screams, and grunts.

When I first searched for insects in the Transvaal, and in a valley beneath high cliffs, I was intensely surprised to find the stones turned over before my arrival. Being positively certain that no other geodephagous coleopterist was in the neighbourhood, I was somewhat inclined, like the Roman missionaries, who, on their arrival in Thibet, found Catholic ritual among the Buddhists, to ascribe the circumstance to occult influence; but this was before I became acquainted with the insect-searching attributes of my friends the Baboons.

I am not aware of any published records of the menstrual periods of female Baboons. These are not zoologically unimportant, and appear to be somewhat irregular. My observations on one animal during 1894–5 were as follows:—Oct. 15th, Nov. 23rd, Dec. 27th, Jan. 30th, March 8th, April 15th, May 20th, July 4th, Sept. 9th, Oct. 21st.