84 MAMMALIA—HOWLING MONKEY.* 
easily distinguished from the monkey kind. In the use of their tail these 
animals are singularly dexterous. They can pick up with it even straws 
and bits of wood; and M. Audebert tells us, that he saw one of the species 
carry hay in its tail to make its bed, and move and spread it about as easily 
as an elephant could have done with his trunk. 
In climbing, too, this member is of great use. There are, (says Dam- 
pier,) in the Isthmus of America, numbers of monkeys, some of which are 
white, but the most part black—some have beards, others none. These 
monkeys are very droll, and performed a thousand grotesque postures as we 
traversed in the woods. When they are unable to leap from one tree to 
another, on account of the distance, or the tree being separated by a river, 
their dexterity is very surprising. The whole family form a kind of chain, 
locking tail in tail, or hand in hand, and one of them holding the branch 
above, the rest swing down, balancing to and fro like a pendulum, until the 
undermost is enabled to catch hold of the lower branches of some neighbor- 
ing tree. When the hold is fixed below, the monkey lets go that which 
was above, and thus comes undermost in turn; but creeping up along the 
chain, attains the next branches of the tree like the rest; and thus, they all 
take possession without ever coming to the ground. - 
| They have the address to break the shell of oysters to eat them. They 
generally produce only one or two young ones at a time, which they carry 
upon their backs; they feed upon fish, worms, and insects, but fruit is their 
general food, and they grow fat when it is ripe, when, it is said, their flesh 
is good and exquisite eating. . 
The coaita is about a foot and a half long, and its tail is longer than the 
head and body measured together: it goes on all fours. 
‘ 
THE: WARINE, AND THE AL OUAT 0, Ok 
HOWLING MONKEY,! ; 
Are the largest of these animals, belonging to the new continent: they 
surpass the size of the largest monkey, and approach the size of the baboon. 
They have a long tail, and are moreover of the sapajou family, in which they 
hold a very distinct rank, not only with regard to size, but also to voice 
which sounds like a drum, or as others say, like the screaming of immense 
herds of swine, and may be heard at a very great distance. From the exces- 
sive noise which they make, they have obtained the name of the howling 
monkey. Marcgrave informs us, “that every morning and evening the warines 
1 Mycetes seniculus. The genus Mycetes has four upper and four lower incisors ; twe 
Bpper and two lower canines; twelve upper and twelve ek molars. Canines well de 
veloped, triquetrous; head pyramidal; countenance oblique ; facial angle, thirty degrees . 
hyoid bone ventricose, apparent externally, and cavernous. Four extremities pentadac- 
tyle; tail very long; strongly prehensile, naked under its extremity ; nails convex and short, 
