[Footnote 1: Leucoprymnus Nestor, _Bennett_.]
Although common in the southern and western provinces, it is never found at a higher elevation than 1300 feet.
When observed in their native wilds, a party of twenty or thirty of these creatures is generally busily engaged in the search for berries and buds. They are seldom to be seen on the ground, and then only when they have descended to recover seeds or fruit that have fallen at the foot of their favourite trees. In their alarm, when disturbed, their leaps are prodigious; but generally speaking, their progress is made not so much by _leaping_ as by swinging from branch to branch, using their powerful arms alternately; and when baffled by distance, flinging themselves obliquely so as to catch the lower boughs of an opposite tree, the momentum acquired by their descent being sufficient to cause a rebound, that carries them again upwards, till they can grasp a higher branch; and thus continue their headlong flight. In these perilous achievements, wonder is excited less by the surpassing agility of these little creatures, frequently encumbered as they are by their young, which cling to them in their career, than by the quickness of their eye and the unerring accuracy with which they seem almost to calculate the angle at which a descent would enable them to cover a given distance, and the recoil to elevate themselves again to a higher altitude.
2. The low country Wanderoo is replaced in the hills by the larger species, _P. ursinus_, which inhabits the mountain zone. The natives, who designate the latter the _Maha_ or Great Wanderoo, to distinguish it from the _Kaloo_, or black one, with which they are familiar, describe it as much wilder and more powerful than its congener of the lowland forests. It is rarely seen by Europeans, this portion of the country having till very recently been but partially opened; and even now it is difficult to observe its habits, as it seldom approaches the few roads which wind through these deep solitudes. It was first captured by Dr. Kelaart in the woods near Neuera-ellia, and from its peculiar appearance it has been named _P. ursinus_ by Mr. Blyth.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mr. Blyth quotes as authority for this trivial name a passage from MAJOR FORBES' _Eleven Years in Ceylon_; and I can vouch for the graphic accuracy of the remark.--"A species of very large monkey, that passed some distance before me, when resting on all fours, looked so like a Ceylon bear, that I nearly took him for one."]