442 



ANIMALS OF EGA 



not exclusively due to the blood, but partly to a pigment 

 beneath the skin which would probably retain its colour 

 a short time after the circulation had ceased. 



After seeing much of the morose disposition of the 

 Uakari, I was not a little surprised one day at a friend's 

 house to find an extremely lively and familiar individual 

 of this species. It ran from an inner chamber straight 

 towards me after I had sat down on a chair, climbed 

 my legs and nestled in my lap, turning round and looking 

 up with the usual monkey's grin, after it had made itself 

 comfortable. It was a young animal which had been taken 

 when its mother was shot with a poisoned arrow ; its teeth 

 were incomplete, and the face was pale and mottled, the 

 glowing scarlet hue not supervening in these animals 

 before mature age ; it had also a few long black hairs on 

 the eyebrows and lips. The frisky little fellow had been 

 reared in the house amongst the children, and allowed to 

 run about freely, and take its meals with the rest of the 

 household. There are few animals which the Brazilians 

 of these villages have not succeeded in taming. I have 

 even seen young jaguars running loose about a house, 

 and treated as pets. The animals that I had, rarely 

 became familiar, however long they might remain in my 

 possession, a circumstance due no doubt to their being 

 kept always tied up. 



The Uakari is one of the many species of animals 

 which are classified by the Brazilians as * mortal', or of 

 delicate constitution, in contradistinction to those which 

 are * duro,' or hardy. A large proportion of the specimens 

 sent from Ega die before arriving at Para, and scarcely 

 one in a dozen succeeds in reaching Rio Janeiro alive. 

 It appears, nevertheless, that an individual has once 

 been brought in a living state to England, for Dr. Gray 

 relates that one was exhibited in the gardens of the 

 Zoological Society in 1849. The difficulty it has of ac- 

 commodating itself to changed conditions probably has 

 some connection with the very limited range or confined 

 sphere of life of the species in its natural state, its native 

 home being an area of swampy woods, not more than 

 about sixty square miles in extent, although no per- 

 manent barrier exists to check its dispersal, except to- 

 wards the south, over a much wider space. When I 

 descended the river in 1859, we had with us a tame 

 adult Uakari, \vhich was allowed to ramble about the 



