he and the dog ran with all their might to overtake us. For fear of being surprised, the dog dexterously suffered him to get before him, and watched him with great attention. In short, he had acquired an ascendancy over my whole pack, for which he was perhaps indebted to the superiority of his instinct; for among animals as among men, address often gets the better of strength. While at his meals, Kees could not endure guests; if any of the dogs approached too near him at that time, he gave them a hearty blow, which these poltroons never returned, but scampered away as fast as they could. "It appeared to me extremely singular, and I could not. account for it, that, next to the serpent, the animal which he most dreaded, was one of his own species: whether it was that he was sensible that his being tamed had deprived him of great part of his faculties, and that fear had got possession of his senses, or that he was jealous and dreaded a rivalry in my friendship. It would have been very easy for me to catch wild ones and tame them; but I never thought of it. I had given Kees a place in my heart, which no other after him could occupy; and I sufficiently testified how far he might depend on my constancy. Sometimes he heard others of the same species making a noise in the mountains; and, notwithstanding his terror, he thought proper, I know not for what reason, to reply to them. When they heard his voice they approached: but as soon as he perceived any of them he fled with horrible cries; and, running between our legs, implored the protection of everybody, while his limbs quivered through fear. We found it no easy matter to calm him; but he gradually resumed, after some time, his natural tranquillity. He was very much addicted to thieving, a fault common to almost all domestic animals; but in Kees it became a talent, the ingenious efforts of which I admired. Notwithstanding all the correction bestowed upon him by my people, who took the matter. seriously, he was never amended. He knew perfectly well how to untie the ropes of a basket, to take provisions from it; and, above all, milk, of which he was remarkably fond: more than once he has made me go without any. I often beat him pretty severely myself: but, when he escaped from me, he did not appear. at my tent till towards night." "Milk in baskets!" why, truly, the term "basket" as applied to a vessel for holding milk appears to require some explanation; but it was really carried in baskets woven by the Gonaquas, of reeds, so delicate, and so close in texture that they might be employed in carrying water or any liquid. The abstraction of the milk, &c. we consider as a kind of set-off against the appropriation of Kees's favourite root by his master. The pertinacious way in which Kees bestrode Le Vaillant's dogs will recall to the remembrance of some a monkey that was, and perhaps still is, riding about London, in hat and feather, with garments to match, upon a great dog, with the usual accompaniments of hand-organ and Pan's pipe. Upon these occasions the monkey evidently felt proud of his commanding position; but ever and anon we have seen him suffer from one of those sad reverses of fortune to which the greatest among us are subject. In the midst of the performance, while the organ and pipe are playing, and the monkey has it all his own way, and, elevated with the grandeur that surrounds him, is looking rather aristocratically at the admiring crowd, some good-natured but unlucky boy throws the dog a bit of cake, in his zeal to pick up which the latter lowers his head and shoulders so suddenly as infallibly to piteh his rider over his head. We have thought more than once that there was a sly look about the dog as he regarded the unseated monkey, utterly confounded by his downfall and the accompanying shouts of laughter from the bystanders. We shall now proceed to give sketches of the most remarkable species of monkeys in the New World, as well as of those in the Old Continent and its Islands; merely observing, en passant, that though zoologists declare that there is but one European species,* another, at least, is to be met with in our quarter of the globe. The Demopithecus of Aristophanes, "qui vel fraudatione vel adulatione erga populum simiam se exhibet," is, assuredly, not yet extinct on the contrary, it still is, and seems at all times to have been, common in Ireland; nor is it by any means of rare occur rence in Great Britain, especially about the period of a general election. AMERICAN MONKEYS, "High on the twig I've seen you cling,' THE TWO MONKEYS. MANY of the forests of South America flourish in all their primitive grandeur. Immense tracts are covered with vegetable forms in every stage of luxuriant development. Towering trees, their trunks embraced by gigantic twiners and garlanded by a * Macacus sylvanus, Lacépède-the Barbary Ape, which has established itself on the rock of Gibraltar. profusion of plants,* in whose curious and splendid blossoms Nature seems to have imitated, in the wantonness of her prodigality, almost every variety of insect shape-shoot up and darken the light of day with their broad shadows. In these "boundless contiguities of shade," which have never echoed to the woodman's axe, the most perfect silence reigns during the day; a silence, unbroken save by the crashing fall of some ancient tree prostrated by the weight of years, and carrying with it in one vast ruin all that it had long fed and fostered. But, if all is silent during the day, at night "The wonted roar is up amidst the woods, And fills the air with barbarous dissonance;" for in the depths of these solitudes live the Howling Monkeys, to whose voice the voice of the Rev. Gabriel Kettledrummle would be but as the sough of the wind in the bracken. We have already stated that the South American monkeys are all blessed with tails, but they are deprived of those brilliant blue and red callosities which give so much splendour to the integuments of many of the Old World family, and recall sometimes a part of the costume of a certain unearthly pedestrian; for his femoral habiliments "were blue, And there was a hole where the tail came through." Neither do they rejoice in cheek-pouches: they are, consequently, unable to keep any thing in the corner of their jaws, or to furnish forth any rebuke to the Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns of the several courts in this best of all possible worlds.: 66 The Howlers," as they are termed, claim our first attention. They are the largest of the American Simiada,t and the fierce brutality of their disposition, joined to their low facial angle, remind the observer of the baboons of the old continent, whilst their gregarious habits and nocturnal howlings agree with the manners of the Gibbons. The yells uttered by these Howlers in the dead of the night are described as absolutely appalling. They strike upon the ear of the uninitiated benighted traveller as if they were not of this world; and even to the naturalist they are terrible. Nothing," says Waterton, speaking of the Mono *The Orchidaceous Epiphytes. So great is their number in humid situations that a thousand species may, it is asserted, be found in Tarma, Huanuco, and Xauxa alone. They abound in the recesses of tropical forests; but, in the Orchidaceæ, imitation is not confined to images of the insect world, as those will acknowledge who have seen the flower of the Peristeria, enshrining the semblance of a milk-white dove, which seems actually to hover above an altar; wax could hardly be modelled into a more perfect representation. + Genus Mycetes. Colorado, or Red Howler, "nothing can sound more dreadful than its nocturnal howlings. While lying in your hammock in these gloomy and immeasurable wilds, you hear him howling at intervals from eleven o'clock at night till day-break. You would suppose 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 deep-toned growlings as he is pressed on all sides by superior force; and now you hear his last dying moan beneath a mortal wound." When Humboldt and Bonpland landed at Cumana they saw the first troops of Araguatos,* as they journeyed to the mountains of Cocallor and the celebrated cavern of Guacharo. The forests that surrounded the convent of Caripe, which is highly elevated. and where the centigrade thermometer fell to 70° during the night, abounded with them, and their mournful howling was heard, particularly in open weather or before rain or storms, at the distance of half a league. Upwards of forty of this gregarious. species were counted upon one tree on the banks of the Apure; and Humboldt declares his conviction that, in a square league of these wildernesses, more than two thousand may be found. Melancholy is the expression of the creature's eye, listless in its gait, and dismal in its voice. The young ones never play in captivity like the Sagoins; no, "The Araguato de los Cumanenses," as the worthy Lopez de Gomara voucheth," hath the face of a man, the beard of a goat, and a staid behaviour," such, in short, as may well beseem the possessor of such a "powerful organ,' as the newspaper critics have it. We will endeavour, with Humboldt's assistance, to convey to the reader some idea of the structure of this sonorous instrument. That most observing traveller states that the bony case of the os hyoides, or bone of the tongue, in the Mona Colorado is, in size, equal to four 'cubic inches (water measurement). The larynx, or windpipe, consisting of six pouches, ten lines in length and from three to five in depth, is slightly attached by muscular fibres. The pouches are like those of the little whistling monkeys, squirrels, and some birds. Above these pouches are two others, the lips or borders of which are of a yellowish cast; these are the pyramidal sacs which are formed by membranous partitions and enter into the bony case. Into these sacs, which are from three to four inches in length and terminate in a point, the air is driven; the fifth pouch is in the aperture of the arytenoïd cartilage and is situated between the pyramidal sacs, of the same form but shorter; and the sixth pouch is formed by the bony Mycetes Ursinus. It is nearly three feet in length, without including the tail. drum itself within this drum the voice acquires the doleful tone above alluded to. But we are becoming anatomical and soporifical; no more, then, of this " evening drum," and turn we to that grotesque race, the Sapajous. They are slender, mild in disposition, flat in face, long in tail, and spidery in general appearance. The genus Ateles of M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire stands first upon the roll. With anterior hands, either entirely deprived of thumbs, or only supplied with mere rudiments, and weak, long limbs, justifying their popular names of "Spider Monkeys," they are compensated by a prehensile tail of such exquisite sensibility and power, that it may be almost considered a fifth hand. For a length of six or seven inches from the tip, this is naked; and, on the under surface, it is comparatively callous, for the purpose of prehension. Humboldt asserts that the animal can introduce it, without turning its head, into narrow chinks or clefts, and hook out any substance; but he never saw it employed to convey food to the mouth, though the natives will have it that the monkey goes a fishing with it. Leap the species of this genus cannot, or, at most, but very imperfectly; this tail of all work, however, amply makes amends, for by it they hang suspended from the branches or swing themselves from bough to bough, and from, tree to tree, with the utmost agility. Dampier relates, and his statements are generally worthy of credit, that, when troops of them have occasion to cross rivers, they look out for a point where the trees are most lofty, and project farthest over the water. Having arrived at such a place, they climb to the boughs best suited to their purpose, and form, a long chain by grasping the tails of each other. This chain hangs free at the lower end, while it is held on at the top, and the living pendulum is swung backwards and forwards, till it acquires sufficient vibration to carry the lower end to the opposite bank. Then the lowest joint catches hold of the first branch within his reach, and mounts as high as he can. As soon as he has made himself fast, the upper joint on the other side lets go, and the whole conjoined "tail" swings, and is carried safely over. Humboldt and Bonpland saw some of them which inhabit the banks of the Orinoco suspended in great numbers from the trees, and hanging on to each other by tail and hands in the most ridiculous groups, The Quata, or, as the French write the word,. Coaita,* is said to unite activity with intelligence, gentleness, prudence, and penetration. To be sure the Quatas will, when they meet with a learned traveller, or any other strange animal, descend to the lower branches of their trees, to examine the phenomenon, and, when Ateles paniscus. |