Usually the young are feeble, dull, and querulous in captivity, and sit huddled up together on the ground, seldom or never climbing trees. On the smooth surface of a matted floor they will run along on their feet and slide on their hands at the same time. By being fed solely on plantains, or on milk and rice, they are apt to lose all their fur, presenting in their nude state a most ridiculous appearance. Few recover; but by change of diet, and especially by allowing them to help themselves to insects, some of them come round, and resume their natural covering. For the most part they are devoid of those pranks and tricks which are exhibited by the smaller Monkeys. The length of a full-grown male was two feet six inches; the fore-limb measured two feet one inch, and the hind limb one foot seven and a half inches. The Lar or White-handed Gibbon has a black skin and hair, and there is a white band round the entire face, across the forehead. The Lar is common in its native haunts, and is subject to great variation in its colour. Some are dark brown or black, with white hands and feet, and they have the circle of white hairs around the face, the band across the forehead coming down in a peak above the nose. Others are ochre-brown, and have a lighter-coloured hand, foot, and anklet; whilst many are a dirty white. They take odd fancies, and likes and dislikes. Some which are allowed in India to roam about the grounds of the Zoological Gardens there will come in to sleep, and are exceedingly gentle to men, but extremely savage to women; others do not do this. In looking at the collection in the British Museum, every one must be struck with the long necks of these creatures, which do not allow the little muzzle and snub-like nose to come down on a level with the breast-bone (as in the Chimpanzee, for instance), and also with the extremely narrow and long hands and feet, with their thin fingers. It will be also noticed that the nails of their thumbs and toe-thumbs are flat, whilst all the rest are claws. Their chin is less prominent than that of the Siamang, and this is shown in the skull. In the lower jaw there are some interesting differences between the Lar and the Siamang which cannot readily be accounted for; firstly, the crushing teeth wear in pits in the middle, whilst a ridge is formed in the Siamang; and in the Lar the angle of the jaw is decidedly turned in or inflected, as the term is, a condition which will be noticed in the other Hylobates. No air or laryngeal sac is found in the Lar or in any Gibbon, and its noise has therefore nothing to do with such an organ. Their swinging from branch to branch is assisted by the same arrangement of the muscle of the arm as in the Siamang; and they have the _transversus pedis_, which was stated to be wanting in the Orang, and it is united with the adductor of the thumb. THE HOOLOOK.[22]