1 86 APES, MONKEYS, AND LEMURS 



carnage. Now it is the tremenduous 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 supposed 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 

 (windpipe), 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 daytime ; 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 dis- 

 cordant sounds. Thus one single solitary monkey, in lieu of having others to sit 

 down and listen to him, according to the report of travelers, has not even one 

 attendant. Once I was fortunate 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 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 in- 

 fernal regions. ' ' 



The brown howler (M. ursinus) is a Brazilian species, apparently 

 found only or chiefly south of the Amazon. Its usual color is a 

 blackish brown, more or less washed with yellow ; and some varieties are almost 

 entirely yellow, this being most marked on the limbs and tail. The howler 

 described as M. fuscus, of which specimens have been exhibited in the London 

 Zoological Society's Gardens, is regarded by Dr. Gray merety as a variety of this 

 species. It has been observed that the specimens of this monkey from the more 

 northerly regions of Brazil are rufous or ferruginous in color, while the females and 

 those from the more southern regions are brown or blackish brown. This species 

 is very closely allied to the red howler. 



In Costa Rica, and probably also in other districts of Central 

 Howler America, the howling monkeys are represented by a Very well- 

 marked species, known as the mantled howler (M. palliatus). This 

 animal is characterized by the presence of a fringe of long brownish-yellow hair 

 running along the lower part of the flanks, so as to form a kind of mantle on each 

 side of the body. The general color of the fur is blackish brown, the hairs on the 

 middle of the back, as well as on the upper parts of the sides, being yellowish 

 brown, with black tips. 



Fossil, AMERICAN MONKEYS 



In previous chapters we have seen how all the fossil monkeys of the Old World 

 are more or less closely allied to the recent monkeys of that half of the 

 globe, none of them showing any signs of closer affinity with their western cousins. 

 The same holds good with regard to the extinct monkeys which have left their 



