750 



THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS. 



of November a light wind from down river 

 sprang up, and all who had sails hoisted 

 them. It was the first time during our trip 

 that we had had occasion to use our sails, 

 so continual is the calm on this upper river. 

 We bowled along merrily, and soon entered 

 the broad channel lying between Baria and 

 the mainland on the south bank. The wind 

 carried us right into the mouth of the Teffe, 

 and at four o'clock P.M. we cast anchor iq 

 the port of Ega. 



CHAPTER XII. 



ANIMALS OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF EGA. 



Scarlet-faced Monkeys Parauac6 Monkey Owl-faced 

 Night Apes Marmosets Jupura Bats Birds Cu- 

 vier's Toucan Curl-crested Toucan Insects Pen- 

 dulous Cocoons Foraging Ante Blind Ants. 



As may have been gathered from the re- 

 marks already made, the neighborhood of 

 Ega was a fine field for a natural history 

 collector. With the exception of what could 

 be learned from the few specimens brought 

 home, after transient visits, by Spix and 

 Martius and the Count de Castelnau, whose 

 acquisitions have been deposited in the 

 public museums of Munich and Paris, very 

 little was known in Europe of the animal 

 tenants of this region. The collections that I 

 had the opportunity of making and sending 

 home attracted, therefore, considerable at- 

 tention. Indeed, the name of my favorite 

 village has become quite a household word 

 among a numerous class of naturalists, not 

 only in England, but abroad, in consequence 

 of the very large number of species (upward 

 of 3,000) which they have bad to describe, 

 with the locality "Ega" attached to them. 

 The discovery of new species, however, 

 forms but a small item in the interest be- 

 longing to the study of the living creation. 

 The structure, habits, instincts, and geo- 



fraphical distribution of some of the oldest- 

 uown forms supply inexhaustible materials 

 for reflection. The few remarks I have to 

 make on the animals of Ega will relate to 

 the mammals, birds, and insects, and will 

 sometimes apply to the productions o%the 

 whole Upper Amazons region. We will be- 

 gin with the monkeys, the most interesting, 

 next to man, of all animals. 



Scarlet-faced Monkeys. Early one sunny 

 morning, in the year 1855, I saw in the 

 streets of Ega a number of Indians, carrying 

 on their shoulders down to the port, to be 

 embarked on the Upper Amazons steamer, a 

 large cage made of strong lianas, some 

 twelve feet in length and five in height, con- 

 taining a dozen monkeys of the most gro? 

 tesque appearance. Their bodies (about 

 eighteen inches in height, exclusive of limbs; 

 were clothed from neck to tail with very 

 }ong, straight, and shining whitish hair ; 

 their heads were nearly bald, owing to the 

 very short crop of thin giay hairs, and their 

 faces glowed with the most vivid scarlet hue. 

 As a finish to their striking physiognomy, 

 they had bushy whiskers of a sandy color, 

 meeting under the chin, and reddish-yellow 



eyes. These red-faced apes belonged to a& 

 species called by the Indians Uakafi, which 

 is peculiar to the Ega district, and the cage 

 with its contents was being sent as a present- 

 by Senhor Chrysostomo, the Director of 

 Indians of the Japura, to one of the govern- 

 ment officials at Rio Janeiro, in acknowledg- 

 ment of having been made colonel of the 

 new National Guard. They had been db 

 tained with great difficulty in the forests 

 which cover the lowlands, near the principal 

 mouth of the Japura, about thirty miles from 

 Ega. It was the first time I had seen ttiis 

 most curious of all the South American 

 monkeys, and one that appears to have 

 escaped the notice of Spix and Martius. I 

 afterward made a journey to the distiict in- 

 habited by it, but did not then succeed in . 

 obtaining specimens ; before leaving the. 

 country, however, I acquired two individ- 

 uals, one of which lived in my house for 

 several weeks. 



The scarlet- faced monkey belongs, in all es- 

 sential points of structure, to the same family 

 (Cebidse) as the rest of the large-sized Amer- 

 ican species ; but it differs from all its rel- 

 atives in having only the rudiment of a tail^ 

 a member which reaches in some allied kinds, 

 the highest grade of development known in 

 the order. It was so unusual to see a nearly 

 tailless monkey from America, that natural- 

 ists thought, when the first specimens ar 

 rived in Europe, that the member had been 

 shortened artificially. Nevertheless, the 

 Uakari is not quite isolated from its related 

 species of the same family, several other 

 kinds, also found on the Amazons, forming 

 a graduated passage between the extreme 

 forms as regards the tail. The appendage 

 reaches its perfection in those genera (the 

 Howlers, the Lagothrix, and the Spider 

 Monkeys) in which it presents on its under 

 surface near the tip a naked palm, which 

 makes it sensitive and useful as a fifth hand, . 

 in climbing. In the rest of the genera of* 

 Cebidae (seven in number, containing thirty- 

 eight species), the tail is weaker in structure,, 

 entirely covered with hair, and of little or 

 no service in climbing, a few species nearly 

 related to our Uakari having it much shorter 

 than usual. All the Cebidae, both long- 

 tailed and short-tailed, are equally dwellers 

 in trees. The scarlet-faced monkey lives in 

 forests which are inundated daring great 

 part of the year, and is never known to de- 

 scend to the ground; the shortness of ilrf, 

 tail is therefore no sign of terrestrial habits, 

 as it is in the Macaques and Baboons ol tbo 

 Old World. It differs a little from the typi- 

 cal Cebidae in its teeth, the incisors being 

 oblique and in the upper jaw converging, BJ- 

 as to leave a gap between the outermost and. 

 the cauine teeth. Like all the rest of its 

 family, it differs from the monkeys of the 

 Old World, and from man, in having an 

 additional grinding-tooth (premolar) on each 

 side of both jaws, making the complete set 

 thirty-six instead of thirty-two in number. 



The white Uakari (Brachyurus calvus) v 

 seems to be found in no other part o 



