702 NATURAL HISTORY. 



coaita, the latter not to be confounded with the coaiti mentioned among 

 the beasts of prey. Bates, who lived many years on the Amazon, gives 

 the following note on one species : — 



" I once saw a most ridiculously tame coaita. It was an old female, 

 which accompanied its owner, a trader on the river, in all its voyages. By 

 way of giving me a specimen of its intelligence and feeling, its master set 

 to and rated it soundly, calling it scamp, heathen, thief, and so forth, all 

 through the copious Portuguese vocabulary of vituperation. The poor 

 monkey, quietly seated on the ground, seemed to be in sore trouble at 

 this display of anger. It began by looking earnestly at him, then it 

 whined, and lastly rocked its body to and fro with emotion, crying pite- 

 ously, and passing its long, gaunt arms continually over its forehead ; for 

 this was its habit when excited, and the front of its head was worn quite 

 bald in consequence. At length the master altered his tone. ' It's all a 

 lie, my old woman ; you're an angel, a flower, a good, affectionate old 

 creature,' and so forth. Immediately the poor monkey ceased its wailing, 

 and soon after came over to where the man sat." 



An allusion must be made to the oft-described way in which the spider- 

 monkeys cross a stream. If it be narrow, they leap across it, trusting 

 to luck and their tails to find a landing-place on the other side ; if it be 

 wider, they form a living bridge by joining themselves into a long chain, 

 and swinging from a tree until the end monkey can reach the branches 

 on the opposite side. Over this bridge the whole troop travel, then the 

 bridge itself is broken at the starting-point, and then all are safe on the 

 farther side. All of the spider-monkeys are eaten, and their flesh is highly 

 praised. 



The remaining monkeys and apes all belong to the Old World. They 

 stand on a higher plane than those of America so far as approximation in 

 structure to man is concerned. They have the same number of teeth, the 

 same finger-nails, and in some the tail is lacking, while in none has it the 

 prehensile character that it has in the sapajous and spider-monkeys. Intel- 

 lectually, too, they rank higher, and in comparing them, in this respect, 

 with a horse or a dog due allowance has to be made for an important ele- 

 ment. Dogs and horses have been domesticated for thousands of years, so 

 that we have to deal in their cases not only with the natural, but the 

 inherited intelligence derived from generations of contact with the intel- 

 lectual king of the animal world. In the case of the monkeys, at best we 

 can have but the inheritance of but a very few generations of domesticated 

 forms ; everything else is the result of the animal's own advance unassisted 

 by man. This allowance made, monkeys are seen to occupy a position 

 next to man, if not above an Australian, a Bushman, or a Patagonian in 



