D) PRIMATES. 
Some broke down dry Sticks and threw at me; * * * at last one bigger than the 
rest came to a small Limb just over my Head; and leaping directly at me made me 
start back; but the Monkey caught hold of the Bough with the tip of his Tail; and 
there continued swinging to and fro, and making Mouths at me. At last I past on, 
they still keeping me Company, with the like menacing Postures, till I came to our 
Huts. The Tails of these Monkeys are as good to them as one of their Hands; and 
they will hold as fast by them. If two or more of us were together they would hasten 
from us. The Females with their young ones are much troubled to leap after the 
Males; for they have commonly two: one she carries under one of her Arms; the 
other sits on her Back, and clasps her two Fore-Paws about her Neck. These 
Monkeys are the most sullen I ever met with; for all the Art we could use would 
never tame them. It is a hard matter to shoot one of them, so as to take it; for if it 
gets hold with its Claws or Tail, it will not fall so long as one breath of Life remains. 
After I have shot at one and broke a Leg or an Arm, I have pitied the poor Creatures 
to see it look and handle the wounded Limb, and turn it about from side to side. 
These Monkeys are very rarely, or (as some say) never on the Ground.” 
In the third volume of the same collection will be found “A New Voyage and 
Description of the Isthmus of America,” by Lionel Wafer, Surgeon, who, being dis- 
abled by an accident, was left behind by Dampier’s party in May 1681 among the 
friendly Indians of Darien, with whom he lived for some months. In his account of 
the wild animals of the Isthmus he says (p. 330):— 
‘There are great Droves of Monkeys, some of them white, but most of them black ; 
some have Beards, others are beardless. They are of a middle Size, yet extraordinary 
fat at the dry Season, when the Fruits are ripe; and they are very good Meat, for we 
eat of them very plentifully. The Jndians were shy of eating them for a while; but 
they soon were perswaded to it, by seeing us feed on them so heartily. In the rainy 
Season they have Worms in their Bowels. I have taken a Handful of them out of 
one Monkey we cut open; and some of them 7 or 8 Foot long. They are a very 
waggish Kind of Monkey, and plaid a thousand antick Tricks as we march’d at any 
Time through the Woods, skipping from Bough to Bough, with the young one’s | 
hanging at the old one’s Back, making Faces at us and chattering. * * * To pass 
from Top to Top of high Trees, whose Branches are a little too far asunder for their 
Leaping, they will sometimes hang down by one another’s Tails in a Chain; and 
swinging in that Manner, the lowermost catches hold of a Bough of the other Tree 
and draws up the rest of them.” 
Turning to the pages of systematic zoologists, we find, till of late years, only the 
vaguest and most inaccurate statements as to the distribution and specific identity 
of the Central-American Monkeys. The first contribution to the subject of any 
scientific value is contained in a “ Note upon the northern limit of the Quadrumana 
in the New World,” published by Mr. Sclater in the ‘ Natural-History Review’ for 
