THE MONKEYS OF DUTCH GUIANA. 397 



composed of bone-substance of about the size of a goose-egg, which is 

 set in the hollow of the under jaw. It looks from without like a wen, 

 and acts as a sounding-board to strengthen the voice to an almost incred- 

 ible extent. The females have a similar apparatus, but only about an 

 inch in size. I do not know what it is that prompts the animal to set 

 up its great cry. It is believed in the colony that it cries out only 

 when the flood-tide begins, but this is wrong, for these apes howl at 

 all times of day, and quite as much in the interior of the country, 

 where there can be no tide. There may bo some atmospheric influence 

 which provokes the males to howl, while the females join in with them. 

 There can not be a sexual impulse in the matter, for that would not 

 make old and young howl together. I have had opportunities to hear 

 this howling a great many times, and to observe the howlers from a 

 very close vicinity. Every time, there sat an old male up in a tree, 

 supporting himself on his fore-feet, and having his long tail, naked 

 of hair on the inside for about nine inches from the end, black 

 and smooth as a hand, wrapped around a limb, while other males, 

 females, and young sat beneath him in a variety of positions. All at 

 once the old fellow would set up a horrible rattling "Rochu, rochu !" 

 which, after five or six repetitions, passed into a bellowing in which 

 all the others would join, and which was loud enough to make one 

 afraid of losing his hearing. It is so loud that it can be heard on 

 still nights two leagues off ; and it lasts for about ten minutes, and 

 then subsides. The roar of the tigers, which troubled Pichegru and 

 his companions so much on their flight from Cayenne to Surinam, was 

 evidently nothing else than the howling of these apes, which might 

 well fill one, hearing it for the first time, and not knowing that it came 

 from harmless monkeys, with fright. The howling ape is sluggish 

 and melancholy, and jumps only when it is pursued, while at other 

 times it climbs deliberately among the trees, always holding itself by 

 the tail. When captured young it becomes tame and confiding, and 

 will play with cats and dogs, but is usually quiet, and if the person to 

 whom it is attached goes away, it indulges in a continual rattling and 

 highly unpleasant cry. 



I could never succeed in raising one of them. They have a pecul- 

 iarly unpleasant odor, by which one can easily tell when he is near one. 

 Like all the apes, they bring only one young into the world at a time. 

 Their principal enemy is the tufted eagle {Falco destructor). 



The qxiatta (Ateles paniscus) is as large as the howling ape, but 

 slimmer and not so slow. It does not appear on the coast, but only in 

 the higher lands, where it constitutes a choice game for the bush ne- 

 groes. Its head, body, tail, and feet are clothed in bright black hairs, 

 while its nearly bare, narrow, ruddy face is very like that of an old 

 Indian woman. The tail, about three feet long, is, like the tail of the 

 alouatte, bare on the under side for about nine inches. The tip of the 

 tail is also the animal's most delicate organ of feeling, and commonly 



