144 THE monkey's taste in art. 



cence, the same playful smile, the same rapidity in the 

 transition from joy to sorrow. Its large eyes are in- 

 stantly filled with tears, when it is seized with fear. Ii 

 is extremely fond of insects, particularly of spiders. The 

 sagacity of this little animal is so great that one brought 

 in their boat to Angostura distinguished perfectly the 

 different plates annexed to one of Cuvier's works on 

 Natural History. The engravings of this work were 

 not coloured ; yet the titi advanced rapidly its little hand 

 in the hope of catching a grasshopper or a wasp, every 

 time the travellers showed it the plate, on which these 

 insects were represented. It remained perfectly indiffer- 

 ent when it was shown engravings of skeletons or heads 

 of mammiferous animals. When several of these little 

 monkeys, shut up in the same cage, were exposed to the 

 rain, they twisted their tail round their neck, and inter- 

 twined their arms and legs to warm one another. The 

 hunters told the travellers that in the forests they often 

 met groups of ten or twelve of these animals, whilst 

 others sent forth lamentable cries, because they wished 

 to enter the group to find warmth and shelter. By 

 shooting arrows dipped in weak poison at one of these 

 groups, a great number of young monkeys are taken 

 alive at once. The titi in falling remains clinging to its 

 mother, and if it be not wounded by the fall, it does not 

 quit the shoulder or the neck of the dead animal. Most 

 of those that were found alive in the huts of the Indians, 

 had been taken thus from the dead bodies of their 

 mothers. 



To gain something in breadth in their narrow canoe 

 the travellers constructed a sort of lattice-work on the 

 stern with branches of trees, that extended on each side 



