Chap. Y. TAME UAKARI. . 311 
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 pos- 
session, 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 speci- 
mens 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 
accommodating 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 
permanent barrier exists to check its dispersal, except 
towards the south, over a much wider space. When I 
descended the river in 1859, we had with us a tame 
adult Uakari, which was allowed to ramble about the 
vessel, a large schooner. When we reached the mouth 
of the Rio Negro, we had to wait four days whilst 
the custom-house officials at Barra, ten miles distant, 
made out the passports for our crew, and during this time 
the schooner lay close to the shore, with its bowsprit 
secured to the trees on the bank. Well, one morning, 
