Quadrupeds. 2049 



" We have already stated that the South-American monkeys are all blessed with 

 tails, but they are deprived of those brilliant blue and red callosities which give so 

 much splendour to the integuments of many of the Old World family, and recal some- 

 times a part of the costume of a certain unearthly pedestrian ; for his femoral habili- 

 ments 



' were blue, 

 And there was a hole where the tail came through.' 

 Neither do they rejoice in cheek-pouches: they are, consequently, unable to keep any- 

 thing in the corner of their jaws, or to furnish forth any rebuke to the Rosencrantzes 

 and Guildensterns of the several courts in this best of all possible worlds. 



" ' The howlers,' as they are termed, claim our first attention. They are the largest 

 of the American Simiadae, and the fierce brutality of their disposition, joined to their 

 low facial angle, remind the observer of the baboons of the old continent, whilst their 

 gregarious habits and nocturnal howlings agree with the manners of the gibbons. 

 The yells uttered by these howlers in the dead of the night are described as absolutely 

 appalling. They strike upon the ear of the uninitiated benighted traveller as if they 

 were not of this world ; and even to the naturalist they are terrible. ' Nothing,' says 

 Waterton, speaking of the Mono Colorado, or red howler, ' nothing can sound more 

 dreadful than its nocturnal howlings. While lying in your hammock in these gloomy 

 and immeasurable wilds, you hear him howling at intervals from eleven o'clock at 

 night till day-break. You would suppose that half the wild beasts of the forest were 

 collecting for the work of carnage. Now it is the tremendous roar of the jaguar as he 

 springs on his prey ; now it changes to his deep-toned growlings as he is pressed on 

 all sides by superior force ; and now you hear his last-dying moan beneath a mortal 

 wound.' 



" When Humboldt and Bonpland landed at Cumana they saw the first troops of 

 Araguatos, as they journeyed to the mountains of Cocallor and the celebrated cavern 

 of Guacharo. The forests that surrounded the convent of Caripe, which is highly ele- 

 vated, and where the centigrade thermometer fell to 70° during the night, abounded 

 with them, and their mournful howling was heard, particularly in open weather or be- 

 fore rain or storms, at the distance of half a league. Upwards of forty of this grega- 

 rious species were counted upon one tree on the banks of the Apure ; and Humboldt 

 declares his conviction that, in a square league of these wildernesses, more than two 

 thousand may be found. Melancholy is the expression of the creature's eye, listless 

 is its gait, and dismal is its voice. The young ones never play in captivity like the 

 Sagoins ; no, ' The Araguato de los Cumanenses,' as the worthy Lopez de Gomara 

 voucheth, ' hath the face of a man, the beard of a goat, and a staid behaviour,' such, 

 in short, as may well beseem the possessor of such a ' powerful organ,' as the newspa- 

 per critics have it. 



" We will endeavour, with Humboldt's assistance, to convey to the reader some 

 idea of the structure of this sonorous instrument. That most observing traveller states 

 that the bony case of the os hyoides, or bone of the tongue, in the Mona Colorado, is, 

 in size, equal to four cubic inches (water measurement). The larynx, or windpipe, 

 consisting of six pouches, ten lines in length and from three to five in depth, is slightly 

 attached by muscular fibres. The pouches are like those of the little whistling mon- 

 keys, squirrels, and some birds. Above these pouches are two others, the lips or bor- 

 ders of which are of a yellowish cast ; these are the pyramidal sacs which are formed 

 by membranous partitions and enter into the bony case. Into these sacs, which are 



