162 THE MONKE Y FAMIL Y. 



Now, it has so happened that I have studied attentively the habits 

 of the monkeys called ouarines. The story of their preaching in 

 concert is an idle fabrication, and it has probably given rise to these 

 monkeys being termed howlers or preachers. They commonly go 

 by the name of red monkeys in Demerara. The preaching part of 

 their history is as follows. I take it from my " Wanderings " : 

 " Nothing can sound more dreadful than the nocturnal howlings of 

 this red monkey. Whilst lying in your hammock amid these gloomy 

 and immeasurable wilds, you hear him howling at intervals from 

 eleven o'clock at night till daybreak. You would suppose that half 

 the wild beasts of the forest were collecting for the work of carnage. 

 Now, it is the tremendous roar of the jaguar, as he springs upon his 

 prey ; now, it changes to his terrible and deep-toned growlings, as he 

 is pressed on all sides by superior force ; and now, you hear his last 

 dying groan beneath a mortal wound." Some naturalists have sup- 

 posed that these awful sounds, which you would fancy are those of 

 enraged and dying wild beasts, proceed from a number of red 

 monkeys howling in concert. One of them alone is capable of pro- 

 ducing all these sounds ; and the anatomists, on an inspection of his 

 trachea, will be fully satisfied that this is the case. When you look 

 at him, as he is sitting on the branch of a tree, you will see a lump 

 in his throat, the size of a hen's egg. In dark and cloudy weather, 

 and just before a shower of rain, this monkey will often howl in the 

 day-time ; and if you advance cautiously, and get under the high 

 and tufted trees where he is sitting, you may have a capital oppor- 

 tunity of witnessing his wonderful powers of producing these dreadful 

 and discordant sounds. Thus, one single solitary monkey, in lieu of 

 having "others to sit down and listen to him," according to the 

 report of travellers, has not even one attendant. Once I was for- 

 tunate enough to smuggle myself under the very tree on the higher 

 branches of which was perched a full-grown red monkey. I saw his 

 huge mouth wide open ; I saw the protuberance on his inflated 

 throat ; and I listened with extreme astonishment to sounds which 

 might have had their origin in the infernal regions. 



Another traveller, who also is quoted by our author, says that 

 these ouarine monkeys threw dried branches of the trees at him, and 

 so far forgot themselves, that they " voided their excrements in their 



