T08 



THE TOCANTINS 



by the monster. I drove away the spider and took the 

 birds, but the second one soon died. The fact of species 

 of Mygale sallying forth at night, mounting trees, and 

 sucking the eggs and young of humming-birds, has been 

 recorded long ago by Madame Merian and Palisot de 

 Beauvois ; but, in the absence of any confirmation, it has 

 come to be discredited. From the way the fact has been 

 related it would appear that it had been merely derived 

 from the report of natives, and had not been witnessed 

 by the narrators. Count Langsdorff, in his Expedition 

 into the Interior of Brazil, states that he totally disbelieved 

 the story. I found the circumstance to be quite a novelty 

 to the residents hereabout. The Mygales are quite 

 common insects : some species make their cells under 

 stones, others form artistical tunnels in the earth, and 

 some build their dens in the thatch of houses. The 

 natives call them Aranhas carangueijeiras, or crab-spiders. 

 The hairs with which they are clothed come off when 

 touched, and cause a peculiar and almost maddening 

 irritation. The first specimen that I killed and prepared 

 was handled incautiously, and I suffered terribly for 

 three days afterwards. I think this is not owing to any 

 poisonous quality residing in the hairs, but to their being 

 short and hard, and thus getting into the fine creases of 

 the skin. Some Mygales are of immense size. One day 

 I saw the children belonging to an Indian family who 

 collected for me with one of these monsters secured by 

 a cord round its waist, by which they were leading it 

 about the house as they would a dog. 



The only monkeys I observed at Cameta were the 

 Couxio (Pithecia Satanas), a large species, clothed with 

 long brownish-black hair, and the tiny Midas argentatus. 

 The Couxio has a thick bushy tail ; the hair of the head 

 sits on it like a cap, and looks as if it had been carefully 

 combed. It inhabits only the most retired parts of the 

 forest, on the terra firma, and I observed nothing of its 

 habits. The little Midas argentatus is one of the rarest 

 of the American monkeys. I have not heard of its being 

 found anywhere except near Cameta. I once saw three 

 individuals together running along a branch in a cacao 

 grove near Cameta ; they looked like white kittens : in 

 their motions they resembled precisely the Midas ursulus 

 already described. I saw afterwards a pet animal of this 



