UAKARI MONKEYS. 181 



face was pale and mottled, the glowing scarlet hue not supervening in these animals 

 before mature age ; it had also a few long black hairs on the eyebrows and lips. 

 The frisky little fellow had been reared in the house amongst the children, and 

 allowed to run about freely, and take its meals with the rest of the household. 



" The uakari is one of the many species of animals which are classified by the 

 Brazilians as mortal, or of delicate constitution, in contradistinction to those which 

 are duro, or hardy. A large proportion of the specimens sent from Ega die before 

 arriving at Para, and scarcely one in a dozen succeeds in reaching Rio Janeiro 

 alive. The difficulty it has of accommodating itself to changed conditions probably 

 has some connection with the very limited range, or confined sphere of life, of the 

 species in its natural state, its native home being an area of swampy woods, not 

 more than about sixty square miles in extent, although no permanent barrier exists 

 to check its dispersal, except towards the south (where the Amazon flows), over a 

 much wider space." 



Mr. Bates then goes on to relate how he had a captive uakari on board his 

 vessel, at the mouth of the Rio Negro, which escaped into the forest. On the day 

 after its escape it, however, reappeared, and took up its accustomed position on the 

 vessel, having evidently discovered that the forests of the Rio Negro were by no 

 means so suited to its existence as those of the delta-lands of its native Japura 

 River. Uakaris are never known to descend of their own accord to the ground, 

 the forests inhabited by them being inundated during the greater part of the year. 

 Hence the shortness of their tails is no indication of their habits being more 

 terrestrial than those of the long-tailed sakis. 



OTHER SPECIES. 



Red-Faced On the western side of the Putumayo River the bald uakari is 



Uakari. replaced by a closely allied species, known as the red-faced uakari 

 (U. rubicunda), which appears to have an equally confined distributional area, 

 although the exact western limits of its range are unknown. This uakari differs 

 from the preceding by the hair of the body and the limbs being of an almost 

 uniform rich deep chestnut hue, only becoming rather paler on the neck. This is 

 in marked contrast to the pale sandy white, tending slightly to rufous, on the 

 under-parts and the inner surfaces of the limbs, characteristic of the bald-headed 

 uakari. Both species agree, however, in their brilliant scarlet faces, and in having 

 hair of a rich chestnut tint beneath the throat ; and there can be no doubt but 

 that they are extremely closely related, and have acquired their slight differences 

 of coloration by being now completely separated from one another, although 

 descended at no very distinct epoch from a common ancestor. 



Black-Headed The most northerly representative of these monkeys is the 



uakari. black - headed uakari (U. melanocephala), which is found in the 

 forests to the north of the Rio Negro, especially on the Cassiquiare and the Rio 

 Branco. It thus enters the basins of both the Amazon and the Orinoco, so that it 

 has a considerably larger distributional area than either of the other species, from 

 both of which it is widely different in coloration. 



The general colour is blackish, but the back and sides of the body are 



