254 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



which could only be discovered by the direct and immediate 

 comparison of the different species or varieties of the 

 genus. 



The Red Coati has been known a tolerably long time. 

 Systematic writers have even expressed its character by 

 the name which they bestowed upon it ; but the synonymy 

 which they attached to that, destroyed on the one hand 

 what they had established on the other. It is almost cer- 

 tain that this animal has never been described or repre- 

 sented faithfully ; and if a contrary opinion has obtained, 

 it is because what authors have said of another Coati, 

 which is apparently but a fawn-coloured variety of the 

 brown, has been always referred to this species. By a 

 most singular chance, Schreber having copied the figure of 

 the blackish Coati of Buffon, and having arbitrarily illu- 

 minated it, produced by accident a very near resemblance 

 of the genuine Red Coati. But this only served to aug- 

 ment the error into which people had already fallen on the 

 subject, and to confirm all the mistakes which were its ne- 

 cessary consequence. We shall say more on this subject 

 when we come to the Brown Coati. We find no clear de- 

 signation of the Red Coati among travellers, except in a 

 note communicated by Laborde to Valmont de Bomaire, 

 and inserted by the last in his Dictionary, at the end of the 

 article Quachi. " We met," says the first, " in the woods 

 of Guiana a large species of Quachi, the hair of which is 

 of a bright red," fyc. What is singular, most naturalists 

 must have heard of this species, especially in modern times, 

 notwithstanding the delusion under which they laboured 

 respecting it. 



The principal dimensions of an individual in the French 

 Museum were as follows : 



Length from the occiput to the origin of the tail, one 

 foot, six lines. 



