SOUTH AMERICA. 
275 
baboon, though, it goes by that name, having a long FOURTH 
prensile tail.* Nothing can sound more dreadful — 
1 p ... The large 
than its nocturnal howlings. While lying in your red Mon¬ 
hammock in these gloomy and immeasurable wilds, Deme- 
you hear him howling at intervals, from eleven 
o’clock at night till day-break. You would sup¬ 
pose that half the wild beasts of the forest were 
collecting for the work of carnage. Now, it is the 
tremendous roar of the jaguar, as he springs on his 
prey: now, it changes to his terrible and deep-toned 
growlings, as he is pressed on all sides by superior 
force; and now, you hear his last dying moan, be¬ 
neath a mortal wound. 
Some naturalists have supposed that these awful 
sounds, which you would fancy are those of enraged 
and dying wild beasts, proceed from a number of 
the red monkeys howling in concert. One of them 
alone is capable of producing all these sounds; and 
the anatomists, on an inspection of lps trachea, will 
be fully satisfied that this is the case. When you 
look at him, as he is sitting on the branch of a tree, 
you will see a lump in his throat, the size of a large 
hen’s egg. In dark and cloudy weather, and just 
before a squall of rain, this monkey will often howl 
in the day-time; and if you advance cautiously, and 
get under the high and tufted tree where he is sitting, 
you may have a capital opportunity of witnessing 
his wonderful powers of producing these dreadful 
and discordant sounds. 
* I believe prensile is a new-coined, word. I have seen it, but do not 
remember where. 
