TAILS OF MONKEYS 



439 



haustible materials for reflection. The few remarks I 

 have to make on the animals of Ega will relate to the 

 mammals, birds, and insects, and will sometimes apply to 

 the productions of the whole Upper Amazons region. 

 We will begin with the monkeys, the most interesting, 

 next to man, of all animals. 



Scarlet- faced Monkeys. — Early one sunny morning, in 

 the year 1855, I saw in the streets of Ega, a number of 

 Indians carrying on their shoulders down to the port, 

 to be embarked on the Upper Amazons steamer, a large 

 cage made of strong lianas, some twelve feet in length 

 and five in height, containing a dozen monkeys of the 

 most grotesque appearance. Their bodies (about eighteen 

 inches in height, exclusive of limbs) were clothed from 

 neck to tail with very long, straight, and shining whitish 

 hair ; their heads were nearly bald, owing to the very 

 short crop of thin gray hairs, and their faces glowed with 

 the most vivid scarlet hue. As a finish to their striking 

 physiognomy, they had bushy whiskers of a sandy colour, 

 meeting under the chin, and reddish-yellow eyes. They 

 sat gravely and silently in a group, and altogether pre- 

 sented a strange spectacle. These red-faced apes be- 

 longed to a species called by the Indians Uakari, which is 

 peculiar to the Ega district, and the cage with its contents 

 was being sent as a present by Senhor Chrysostomo, the 

 Director of Indians of the Japura, to one of the Govern- 

 ment officials at Rio Janeiro, in acknowledgment of 

 having been made colonel of the new national guard. 

 They had been obtained with great difficulty in the 

 forests which cover the low lands, near the principal 

 mouth of the Japura, about thirty miles from Ega. It 

 was the first time I had seen this most curious of all the 

 South American monkeys, and one that appears to have 

 escaped the notice of Spix and Martins. I afterwards 

 made a journey to the district inhabited by it, but did 

 not then succeed in obtaining specimens ; before leaving 

 the country, however, I acquired two individuals, one of 

 which lived in my house for several weeks. 



The scarlet-faced monkey belongs, in all essential points 

 of structure, to the same family (Cebidae) as the rest of 

 the large-sized American species ; but it differs from all 

 its relatives in having only the rudiment of a tail, a 

 member which reaches in some allied kinds the highest 

 grade of development known in the order. It was so 



