THE MONKEY TRIEE. 23 



Bowdieh had monkeys served whole before him at the 

 table of the king of Ashanti, having been roasted in a 

 sitting posture; and he said nothing could be more 

 horrid or repugnant than their appearance, with the 

 skin of the lips dried, and the white teeth, giving an 

 aspect of grinning from pain. 



The howling monkeys of South America, who make 

 the forests resound at night, or before a coming storm, 

 with their hideous choruses, and whose hollow and 

 enlarged tongue bone and expanded lower jaw enables 

 them to utter those melancholy and startling cries, are 

 larger and fatter than many others in the same country, 

 and are constantly sought for as food. They eat the 

 thick, triangular Brazil nuts (Bertholletia Excelsa), and 

 break the hard pod which contains them with a stone, 

 laying it on the bough of a tree, or some other stone. 

 They sometimes get their tail between the two ; of course 

 the blow falls upon the tail, and the monkey bounds 

 away, howling in the most frightful manner. 



The prettiest of all monkeys is the Marmozet the 

 Ouistiti of Buffon, the Simia Jacchus of Linnaeus. It 

 is extremely sensitive to cold ; nevertheless, if plentifully 

 supplied with wool, cotton, and other warm materials, 

 will live for years in this climate. Dr. Neil of Edinburgh 

 that most excellent protector and lover of animals 

 brought one from Bahia, which he found great difficulty 

 in training. It even resisted those who fed it, not allow- 

 ing them to touch it, putting on an angry, suspicious 

 look, and being roused by even the slightest whisper. 

 During the voyage it ate corn and fruit, arid when these 

 became scarce, took to cockroaches, of which it cleared 

 the vessel. It would despatch twenty large, besides 

 smaller ones, three or four times in each day, nipping 



