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.
Pages:
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813