RACCOON FAMILY. 
45 
lemurs; and he was also struck with the extreme brightness of its dark eyes. “ I 
once saw it,” he writes, “ in considerable numbers when on an excursion with an 
Indian companion along the low Ygapo shores of the Tefle, about twenty miles 
above Ega [on the upper Amazon], We slept one night at the house of a native 
family living in the thick of the forest, where a festival was going on, and there 
being no room to hang our hammocks under shelter, on account of the number of 
visitors, we lay down on a mat in the open air, near a shed which stood in the 
midst of a grove of forest trees and pupunha palms. Past midnight, when all 
became still after the uproar of the holiday-making, as I was listening to the dull, 
fanning sound made by the wings of impish hosts of vampire-bats crowding 
the kinkajou (|- nat. size). 
round the cajer trees, a rustle commenced from the side of the woods, and a troop 
of slender, long-tailed animals were seen against the clear moonlit sky, taking 
flying leaps from branch to branch through the grove. Many of them stopped at 
the pupunha trees, and the hustling, twittering, and screaming, with the sounds 
of falling fruits, showed how they were employed. I thought at first they were 
Nyctipitheci, but they proved to be jupuras, for the owner of the house early 
next morning caught a young one, and gave it to me. I kept this as a pet animal 
for several weeks, feeding it on bananas and mandioca-meal mixed with treacle. 
It became tame in a very short time, allowing itself to be caressed, but making* 
a distinction in the degree of confidence it showed between myself and strangers. 
My pet was unfortunately killed by a neighbour’s dog, which entered the room 
where it was kept.” 
