Cuap. XII. THE UAKARI MONKEY. 335 
and allowed to run about freely, and take its meals with the rest of the 
household. There are few animals which the Brazilians of these 
villages have not succeeded in taming. I have even seen young 
jaguars running loose about a house, and treated as pets. The animals 
that I had, rarely became familiar, however long they might remain in 
my possession ; a circumstance due no doubt to their being kept always 
tied up. 
The Uakari is one of the many species of animals which are classified 
by the Brazilians as “mortal,” or of delicate constitution, in contra- 
distinction to those which are “duro,” or hardy. A large proportion of 
the specimens sent from Ega die before arriving at Pard, and scarcely 
one in a dozen succeeds in reaching Rio Janeiro alive. It appears, 
nevertheless, that an individual has once been brought in a living state to 
England, for Dr. Gray relates that one was exhibited in the gardens of 
the Zoological Society in 1849. The difficulty it has of accommodating 
itself to changed conditions probably has some connection with the 
very limited range, or confined sphere of life, of the species in its 
natural state, its native home being an area of swampy woods, not more 
than about sixty square miles in extent, although no permanent barrier 
exists to check its dispersal, except towards the south, over a much 
wider space. When I descended the river in 1859, we had with us a 
tame adult Uakari, which was allowed to ramble about the vessel, a 
large schooner. When we reached the mouth of the Rio Negro, we 
had to wait four days whilst the custom-house officials at Barra, ten 
miles distant, made out the passports for our crew, and during this 
time the schooner lay close to the shore, with its bowsprit secured to 
the trees on the bank. Well, one morning scarlet-face was missing, 
having made his escape into the forest. ‘Two men were sent in search 
of him, but returned after several hours’ absence without having caught 
sight of the runaway. We gave up the monkey for lost, until the 
following day, when he re-appeared on the skirts of the forest, and 
marched quietly down the bowsprit to his usual place on deck. He 
had evidently found the forests of the Rio Negro very different from 
those of the delta lands of the Japurda, and preferred captivity to freedom 
in a place that was so uncongenial to him. 
A most curious fact connected with this monkey is the existence of 
an allied form, or brother species, in a tract of country lying to the west 
of its district. ‘This differs in being clothed with red instead of white 
hair, and has been described by Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire (from 
specimens brought to Paris in 1847 by the Comte de Castelnau) as a 
distinct species, under the name of Brachyurus rubicundus. It wholly 
replaces the white form in the western parts of the Japura delta: that is 
to say, in a uniform district of country, 150 miles in length, and sixty to 
eighty in breadth, the eastern half is tenanted exclusively by white 
Uakaris, and the western half by red ones. ‘The district, it may be 
mentioned, is crossed by several channels, which at the present time 
doubtless serve as barriers to the dispersal of monkeys, but cannot have 
done so for many centuries, as the position of low alluvial lands, and 
the direction of channels in the Amazons Valley, change considerably 
in the course of a few years. The red-haired Uakari appears to be most 
