22 BULLETIN-: MUSEL^r OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



^vinter season and a rainy summer is not so clearly recognizable as 

 it is farther north in Sao Paulo. On proceeding some three kilo- 

 meters through a forest of Araucaria and tree-ferns we heard a loud 

 reverberating roar in the tall woods, a noise which my Brazilian com- 

 panions announced to be that of an onza — the jaguar. With drawTi 

 revolvers they started at once into the woods in the direction of the 

 unusual caterwauling sound, which certainly seemed to come from a 

 large and powerful cat. From my post with the pack-train I heard 

 their shots and presently the crash of a body falling through the trees. 

 They had shot and killed a large howling monkey or alouatte (My- 

 cetes), a red-furred specimen measuring about four feet from the nose 

 to the outstretched end of the long prehensile tail. Our experience 

 with this well-known monkey recalls the Italian proverb : — 



La sera lione, 



La mattine babbione. 



Travellers in Brazil speak of the nocturnal howls of these monkeys 

 but we heard their cries but twice and then onh- in the early forenoon. 



We were soon led by a well-beaten track to make a detour from our 

 proper route through the forest. This led us to an isolated cattle 

 and mule ranch, whence we were directed to the main road to Coryti- 

 banos. 



Our path lay through a more or less open growth of Araucaria 

 broken in a valley by numerous stumpy palms, known as Butia. 

 Cattle grazed on several open valley floors. On the open interstream 

 areas we passed many of the small pools or lakelets and in one of them 

 with the brilliant green grass before mentioned lay a dead horse 

 whose struggles were evident from the disposition of the vegetation 

 near his feet. I note this as an instance of how large herbivorous 

 mammals may be tempted into swamps and under favorable geological 

 conditions become fossilized. The animal in this instance had not 

 become mired but probably had fallen ill from the unwonted diet. 

 About an hour after noon we regained the thoroughfare near a cluster 

 of houses with a monjolo or farinha mill, where we halted and cooked 

 breakfast, on the bank of the Rio das Pedras. The basalt traversed 

 this morning displayed many cavities lined with zeolites, fragments of 

 these minerals glistening in the mule path every few yards. The same 

 dull dark brown hue of the thin trappean soil appeared as farther 

 north but I noted in one section where we descended to a stream chan- 

 nel a reddish rusty zone of decayed rock underlying the superficial 

 brown coat of rock which was here about one meter thick. 



