RACCOON FAMILY. 



45 



lemurs : and he was also struck with the extreme brightness of its dark eyes. " I 

 once saw it," he writes, " in considerable numbers when on an excursion with an 

 Indian companion along the low Ygapo shores of the Teffe, about twenty miles 

 above Ega [011 the. upper Amazon]. We slept one night at the house of a native 

 family living in the thick of the forest, where a festival was going on, and there 

 being no room to hang our hammocks under shelter, on account of the number of 

 visitors, we lay down on a mat in the open air, near a shed which stood in the 

 midst of a grove of forest trees and pupunha palms. Past midnight, when all 

 became still after the uproar of the holiday-making, as I was listening to the dull, 

 fanning sound made by the wings of impish hosts of vampire-bats crowding 



THE KINKAJOU (\ nat. size). 



round the cajer trees, a rustle commenced from the side of the woods, and a troop 

 of slender, long-tailed animals were seen against the clear moonlit sky, taking- 

 flying leaps from branch to branch through the grove. Many of them stopped at 

 the pupunha trees, and the hustling, twittering, and screaming, with the sounds 

 of falling fruits, showed how they were employed. I thought at first they were 

 Nyctipitheci, but they proved to be jupuras, for the owner of the house early 

 next morning caught a young one, and gave it to me. I kept this as a pet animal 

 for several weeks, feeding it on bananas and mandioca-meal mixed with treacle. 

 It became tame in a very short time, allowing itself to be caressed, but making 

 a distinction in the degree of confidence it showed between myself and strangers. 

 My pet was unfortunately killed by a neighbour's dog, which entered the room 

 where it was kept." 



