This large Baboon is the principal one with a very short stump of a
tail, and may be distinguished from all others, with and without long
tails, by the enormous swellings of its cheeks on each side of its
nose, and their odd colouring. In general shape it resembles the rest
of the genus, but perhaps its head and chest may be more bulky, and
its limbs shorter and stouter than the others, when it has attained
its full growth. A full-grown male measures five feet when standing
upright, and the colour of the hair is a light olive-brown above and
silvery-grey beneath, and the chin is decorated with a small pointed
yellow beard. It has a “brutus” in the form of a great tuft of hair on
the top of the head, Nature having brushed up the hair off the temples
and forehead upwards, in a peak-shaped ridge on the crown, giving a
triangular appearance to the whole. The ears are naked and pointed near
their tips, and their colour is bluish-black. The muzzle and the lips
are large, and as it were swollen and projecting, and the former is not
only long, but is surrounded above with an elevated rim or border, and
cut short or truncated like that of a Hog. But the most extraordinary
features of this ugliest of faces are the projections on each side of
the nose. These are formed by swellings of the cheek-bones along the
base of the great canine teeth, and the skin covering them is ribbed,
and has ridges which are alternately light blue, scarlet, and deep
purple in colour, contrasting strangely with the other tints of the
hair. To add to the strange look, the eyes are deeply sunken, and their
colour, a deep hazel, contrasts with a streak of vermilion, which
reaches down each side of the nose to the lip, and extends upwards
in the neighbourhood of the brows, which are large and “beetled.” A
forehead would clearly be out of place in such a brute, and therefore
it recedes rapidly above the eyes, and is lost in the great tuft of
hair.
The canine teeth are immense, and when the animal is enraged they and
the others are shown, their beautiful white colour contrasting with
the strange medley of tints around them. On the body the hair is very
bristly, but the hands and feet are naked, and as if to add to the
many peculiarities of the Mandrill, they are small in relation to the
vigorous-looking limbs and short chest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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