THE ANIMAL WORLD OF BRAZIL 



intact if the Coati is left to itself; but a gentleman who had for a 

 long time kept a Coati assured me that there was one remedy. One 

 must leave a brush in the room; the Coati would grasp this before 

 anything else, and would brush its long tail with enthusiasm, 

 becoming too absorbed in this occupation to think about further 

 tricks. 



On the whole, the Brazilian carnivora, like the Brazilian monkeys, 

 have something lovable about them. The Indians of Brazil, who 

 are a gentle people — as we shall see if we read the enthusiastic 

 descriptions of Koch-Grunberg — and have always been great lovers 

 of animals, domesticate all sorts of animals and birds as household 

 pets. The explorer Martins was impressed by this love of animals, 

 and he records that in the Indians' huts he saw as many tame 

 monkeys as human beings. 



"Every member of the family has, among these monkeys and 

 handsomely-plumaged parrots, whose company is often increased by 

 a sloth, captured alive, or a small anteater, his own favourite, with 

 whom he often converses. The monosyllabic paterfamilias watches 

 with silent amusement the droll movements of the menagerie. The 

 garrulous mother and the elder children spend hours in teaching 

 the parrots to speak. The children play in turn with whichever of 

 the animals happens to come their way." 



The Indian lives on intimate terms with Nature; for him there 

 is no hard and fast dividing line between men and beasts. He knew 

 nothing of the senseless destruction of animals, of killing for the sake 

 of killing. If he wished to adorn himself with many-coloured feathers, 

 he employed blunt arrows with little discs instead of arrow-heads, 

 which only stunned the birds, so that he could take their feathers 

 and let them fly again. It touched me to handle these arrows in the 

 Parahyba museum. 



So long as there were only Indians in Brazil, the fauna was pre- 

 served in all its wealth. Only with the coming of the white man was 

 it otherwise. It was he who wrote the last chapter of the history of 

 the Brazilian fauna, but in his hands it became a tragedy. 



The tragedy of the human inhabitants of the country was worse 

 than that of the animals. From masters they became slaves, and 

 then hunted victims, and finally they had no refuge but the virgin 

 forests of the interior. The doom of the animal world unfolded itself 

 more slowly. In the beginning the as yet somewhat ineffective 

 weapons at man's disposal could not cope with the endless wealth 

 of animal life, ever renewed from the unexplored interior. The possi- 



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