HOWLING-MONKEYS PRAIRIE- WOLVES. 237 



quickly came, and, taking him down to the boat, during 

 which time Mr Beale was employed in keeping the beak 

 of the Octopus away from his hand, soon released him 

 by destroying his tormentor with the boat-knife, when he 

 disengaged it by portions at a time. This Cephalopod 

 measured across its expanded arms about four feet, while 

 its body was not bigger than a man's fist* 



The shriek of the jackal bursting on the ear in the 

 silence of night has been described by many a dweller in 

 tents in the East as a most appalling sound. But per- 

 haps this yields in effect to the combined efforts of the 

 howling-monkeys in a South American forest. This most 

 striking of all animal voices is heard occasionally at 

 sunrise and sunset, and sometimes in the heat of the day, 

 but more frequently during the darkness of the night. 

 When near, the roar is terrific : a naturalist f has com- 

 pared it to the tempest howling through rocky caverns. 

 It is a noise so unearthly, that, heard unexpectedly for the 

 first time, it would fill the mind with the most melan- 

 choly and fearful forebodings. 



A traveller in the western wilds of North America 

 bivouacking on the open prairie, awakened at midnight 

 by the voices of a pack of prairie-wolves giving tongue 

 around him, speaks of the wierd impression made on him 

 by hearing a pack in full cry at the dead of the night, 

 and compares it to the phantom hounds and huntsman of 

 the German legends.J 



What was this, however, to Gordon Cumming's noctur- 



* Hist, of the Sperm Whale. t Mr Bates, in the Zoologist, p. 359& 

 J Sullivan's Gambles in America, p. 77. 



