THE LOWER AMAZONS 



to an unwieldy size, and resembling in shape huge can- 

 delabra. 



The forest seemed to abound in monkeys, for I rarely 

 passed a day without seeing several. I noticed four 

 species : the Coaita (Ateles paniscus), the Chrysothrix 

 sciureus, the Callithrix torquatus, and our old Para 

 friend, Midas ursulus. The Coaita is a large black monkey, 

 covered with coarse hair, and having the prominent parts 

 of the face of a tawny flesh-coloured hue. It is the 

 largest of the Amazonian monkeys in stature, but is ex- 

 celled in bulk by the * Barrigudo ' (Lagothrix Hum- 

 boldtii) of the Upper Amazons. It occurs throughout 

 the low lands of the Lower and Upper Amazons, but 

 does not range to the south beyond the limits of the 

 river plains. At that point an allied species, the White- 

 whiskered Coaita (Ateles marginatus) takes its place. 

 The Coaitas are called by some French zoologists spider 

 monkeys, on account of the length and slendemess of 

 their body and limbs. In these apes the tail, as a pre- 

 hensile organ, reaches its highest degree of perfection ; 

 and on this account it would, perhaps, be correct to con- 

 sider the Coaitas as the extreme development of the 

 American type of apes. As far as we know, from living 

 and fossil species, the New World has progressed no 

 farther than the Coaita towards the production of a 

 higher form of the Quadrumanous order. The tendency 

 of Nature here has been, to all appearance, simply to 

 perfect those organs which adapt the species more and 

 more completely to a purely arboreal life ; and no nearer 

 approach has been made towards the more advanced 

 forms of anthropoid apes, which are the products of the 

 Old World solely. The tail of the Coaita is endowed 

 with a wonderful degree of flexibility. It is always in 

 motion, coiling and uncoiling like the trunk of an ele- 

 phant, and grasping whatever comes within reach. An- 

 other remarkable character of the Coaita is the absence 

 of a thumb to the anterior hands. It is worthy of note 

 that this strange deficiency occurs again in the Quad- 

 rumanous order only in the Colobi, a genus of apes pe- 

 culiar to Africa. The Colobi, however, are not furnished 

 with prehensile tails, and belong, in all their essential 

 characters, to the Catarhinae, or Old World monkeys, a 

 group entirely distinct from the Platyrhinae, or South 



