HABITS OF THE HOWLERS. 8/ 



menced. The throat-drum which gives the voice its strength could be 

 seen moving up and down during their yells. Yet this concert had its 

 laughable aspect ; the most misanthropic of mankind must have smiled 

 had he seen the solemn gravity and earnestness with which the bearded 

 performers looked at each other. The natives say that each band has a 

 leader, distinguished by the shrillness of his voice and the gracefulness 

 of his figure. The shrillness was evident; the gracefulness I looked for 

 in vain. I saw, however, two apes that were silent, and whom I sup- 

 posed to be sentinels." 



Hensel writes: " The Howling monkeys live in little troops of five to 

 ten members, and seldom quit the same spot. An old male appears to 

 lead them." Humboldt, however, has seen as many as forty together, 

 and reckoned that there might be as many as two thousand in a quarter 

 of a mile square. He remarks the strange uniformity of the actions of 

 all the members of a band. What one does, all do. When the leader 

 quits a branch, all the family quit it. If the leader suspends himself by 

 the tail and swings himself to and fro to reach a neighboring bough, the 

 whole band assume the same attitude and perform the same motions. 

 They do not, like the old world monkeys, spring from tree to tree ; they 

 never quit one branch with their tail till they have got good hold with 

 their hands, and never let go their hands till their tails have a firm grasp. 

 The muscles of the tail are like a watch-spring and coil up the end of 

 that appendage when at liberty ; the creature can hang by its tail till it 

 is quite dead, and it possesses a tenacity of life unexampled except in 

 some of the Carnivora. 



The same writer, Hensel, describes the difficulty of dispatching one. 

 The first shot broke a hind leg and injured the tail ; a second, went 

 through the belly, causing such a gaping wound that the entrails pro- 

 truded ; a third, through the chest; a fourth, through the throat, carry- 

 ing away part of the underjaw and destro3'ing the howling apparatus, 

 and a fifth was necessary to put the miserable creature out of its anguish. 

 To the last it hung by its wounded tail. As we have said, the under 

 surface of the tail is devoid of hair and has a velvety surface, and when 

 two turns of the tail are cast about a branch the animal remains suspended 

 even in death. Hence Europeans are not very successful in procuring 

 specimens of these apes. A musket-ball seldom hits a part so vital that 

 consciousness is immediately destroyed, and as long as consciousness 

 remains the ape instinctively grasps some limb with his tail ; the poisoned 



