第163章

ANIMALS OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF EGA

Scarlet-faced Monkeys--Parauacu Monkey--Owl-faced Night-apes--Marmosets--Jupura--Bats--Birds--Cuvier's Toucan--Curl-crested Toucan--Insects--Pendulous Cocoons--Foraging Ants--Blind Ants As may have been gathered from the remarks already made, the neighbourhood of Ega was a fine field for a Natural History collector.With the exception of what could be learned from the few specimens brought home, after transient visits by Spix and Martius and the Count de Castelnau, whose acquisitions have been deposited in the public museums of Munich and Paris, very little was known in Europe of the animal tenants of this region; the collections that I had the opportunity of making and sending home attracted, therefore, considerable attention.Indeed, the name of my favourite village has become quite a household word among a numerous class of Naturalists, not only in England but abroad, in consequence of the very large number of new species (upwards of 3000) which they have had to describe, with the locality "Ega"attached to them.The discovery of new species, however, forms but a small item in the interest belonging to the study of the living creation.The structure, habits, instincts, and geographical distribution of some of the oldest-known forms supply inexhaustible materials for reflection.The few remarks Ihave to make on the animals of Ega will relate to the mammals, birds, and insects, and will sometimes apply to the productions of the whole Upper Amazons region.We will begin with the monkeys, the most interesting, next to man, of all animals.

Scarlet-faced Monkeys--Early one sunny morning, in the year 1855, I saw in the streets of Ega a number of Indians, carrying on their shoulders down to the port, to be embarked on the Upper Amazons steamer, a large cage made of strong lianas, some twelve feet in length and five in height, containing a dozen monkeys of the most grotesque appearance.Their bodies (about eighteen inches in height, exclusive of limbs) were clothed from neck to tail with very long, straight, and shining whitish hair; their heads were nearly bald, owing to the very short crop of thin grey hairs, and their faces glowed with the most vivid scarlet hue.As a finish to their striking physiognomy, they had bushy whiskers of a sandy colour, meeting under the chin, and reddish-yellow eyes.These red-faced apes belonged to a species called by the Indians Uakari, which is peculiar to the Ega district, and the cage with its contents was being sent as a present by Senor Chrysostomo, the Director of Indians of the Japura, to one of the Government officials at Rio Janeiro, in acknowledgment of having been made colonel of the new National Guard.They had been obtained with great difficulty in the forests which cover the lowlands near the principal mouth of the Japura, about thirty miles from Ega.It was the first time I had seen this most curious of all the South American monkeys, and one that appears to have escaped the notice of Spix and Martius.I afterwards made a journey to the district inhabited by it, but did not then succeed in obtaining specimens; before leaving the country, however, I acquired two individuals, one of which lived in my house for several weeks.

The scarlet-faced monkey belongs, in all essential points of structure, to the same family (Cebidae) as the rest of the large-sized American species; but it differs from all its relatives in having only the rudiment of a tail, a member which reaches in some allied kinds the highest grade of development known in the order.It was so unusual to see a nearly tailless monkey from America, that naturalists thought, when the first specimens arrived in Europe, that the member had been shortened artificially.Nevertheless, the Uakari is not quite isolated from its related species of the same family, several other kinds, also found on the Amazons, forming a graduated passage between the extreme forms as regards the tail.The appendage reaches its perfection in those genera (the Howlers, the Lagothrix and the Spider monkeys) in which it presents on its under-surface near the tip a naked palm, which makes it sensitive and useful as a fifth hand in climbing.In the rest of the genera of Cebidae (seven in number, containing thirty-eight species), the tail is weaker in structure, entirely covered with hair, and of little or no service in climbing, a few species nearly related to our Uakari having it much shorter than usual.All the Cebidae, both long-tailed and short-tailed, are equally dwellers in trees.The scarlet-faced monkey lives in forests, which are inundated during great part of the year, and is never known to descend to the ground; the shortness of its tail is, therefore, no sign of terrestrial habits, as it is in the Macaques and Baboons of the Old World.It differs a little from the typical Cebidae in its teeth, the incisors being oblique and, in the upper jaw, converging, so as to leave a gap between the outermost and the canine teeth.Like all the rest of its family, it differs from the monkeys of the Old World, and from man, in having an additional grinding-tooth (premolar) in each side of both jaws, making the complete set thirty-six instead of thirty-two in number.