312 The Andes and the Amazon. 



of India which he had seen in the collections of Europe." 

 The jaguar frequents the borders of the rivers and lagunes, 

 and its common prey is the capybara. It fears the pec- 

 cari. The night air is alive with bats of many species, the 

 most prominent one being the Dysojpes ^erotis, which 

 measures two feet from tip to tip of the wings. If these 

 Cheiropters are as impish as they look, and as bloodthirsty 

 as some travelers report, it is singular that Bates and Wa- 

 terton, though residing for years in the country, and our- 

 selves, though sleeping for months unprotected, were un- 

 molested. 



About forty species of monkeys, or one half of the New 

 World forms, inhabit the Valley of the Amazon. Wallace, 

 in a residence of four years, saw twenty-one species — seven 

 with prehensile and fourteen with non-prehensile tails. 

 They all differ from the apes of the other hemisphere. 

 While those of Africa and Asia (Europe has only one) 

 have opposable thumbs on the fore feet as well as hind, 

 uniformly ten molar teeth in each jaw, as in man, and 

 generally cheek-pouches and naked collosities, the Ameri- 

 can monkeys are destitute of the two latter characteristics. 

 None of them are terrestrial, like the baboon ; all (save 

 the marmosets) have twenty-four molars ; the thumbs of 

 the fore-hands are not habitually opposed to the fingers 

 (one genus, Ateles, "the imperfect," is thumbless alto- 

 gether) ; the nostrils open on the sides of the nose instead 

 of beneath it, as in the gorilla, and the majority have long 

 prehensile tails. They are inferior in rank to the anthro- 

 poids of the Old World, though superior to the lemurs of 

 Madagascar. They are usually grouped in two families — 

 Marmosets and Cebidse. The former are restless, timid, 

 squirrel-like lilliputs (one species is only seven inches long), 

 with tails not prehensile — in the case of the scarlet-faced, 

 nearly wanting. The Barigudos, or gluttons {Lagothrix), 



