"The 'Polume,' as Dr. Livingstone calls this species, is in Uniamuezi known as the 'Mbega,' and is admired on account of its polished black skin and snowy-white mane. It is a cleanly animal, ever occupied in polishing its beautiful garb, which, according to the Arabs, it tears to pieces when wounded, lest the hunter should profit by it. The 'Mbega' lives in trees, seldom descending to the ground, and feeds upon fruits and young leaves." (_Burton._)
_Semnopithecus_, F. Cuv., Hist. Nat. Mammif. (1821).
_Presbytis_, Eschsch. Kotzeb. Entdeck. Reis., iii., p. 196 (1821).
The members of this genus have thin and elongated bodies, long limbs, and a very long and slender tail. The head is rounded, and shorter than in the Guenons; the muzzle short, depressed, and but little prominent. The thumb, although shorter than that digit among the Guenons and Macaques, is present in all the species, and forms a good prehensile finger with a flat nail. The hands and feet are long and narrow, and { 101}the finger-nails convex; the great-toe is thick and well-developed. The callosities are small as compared with the Guenons; the fur is abundant, and generally long, soft, and often glossy; and over the eyes they have usually a ridge of stiff hairs projecting in front. The members of this genus, as already observed, have no cheek-pouches; they have, however, a large laryngeal sac formed and situated as described above (p. 84).
The skull is round; the eye-sockets large, with a very prominent superciliary ridge projecting over them; the space between the eyes is broad, and the lower jaw is deep. The upper molars are four-cusped, and the posterior lower molar five-cusped.
The Langurs are, when young, good tempered and easily tamed; but when old they become sulky and ill-natured. They live chiefly in forest regions, in troops of considerable size. "This genus is spread over almost the whole of the Oriental region wherever the forests are extensive. They extend along the Himalayas to beyond Simla, where a species has been observed at an altitude of 11,000 feet, playing among fir-trees laden with snow-wreaths. On the west side of India they are not found to the north of the 14th parallel of latitude. On the east they extend into Arakan, and to Borneo and Java, but not apparently into Cambodia. Along the eastern extension of the Himalayas they again occur in Eastern Thibet, a remarkable species (_S. roxellana_) having been discovered at Moupin (about lat. 32° N.), in the highest forests, where the winters are severe and where the vegetation is wholly that of the Palæarctic region." (_Wallace._)