Le Vaillant, in his introduction to his first voyage, gives the following curious instance of the exhibition of their instinct of clinging to their mother under extraordinary circumstances:--When living in Dutch Guiana, at Paramaribo, where he was born, and where he had already, though very young, formed a collection of insects, the future traveller and his party in one of their excursions had killed a female Monkey. “As she carried on her back a young one, which had not been wounded, we took them both along with us, and when we returned to the plantation, my Ape had not quitted the shoulders of its mother. It clung so closely to them, that I was obliged to have the assistance of a negro to disengage them; but scarcely was it separated from her, when, like a bird, it darted upon a wooden block that stood near, covered with my father’s peruke, which it embraced with its four paws, nor could it be compelled to quit its position. Deceived by its instinct, it still imagined itself to be on the back of its mother, and under her protection. It seemed perfectly at ease on the peruke. I resolved to suffer it to remain, and to feed it there with Goat’s milk. It continued in its error for three weeks, but after that period, emancipating itself from its own authority, it quitted the fostering peruke, and by its amusing tricks became the friend and favourite of the whole family;” though it is difficult to suppress a smile at the idea of a Monkey clinging to a full-bottom on a wig-block, and fancying it its mamma. The story, as it begins mournfully with the slaughter of the poor mother, ends tragically for her unhappy offspring. It died a terrible death--the result, indeed, of its own mischievous voracity, but in agonies frightful to think of. “I had, however,” continues Le Vaillant, “without suspecting it, introduced the wolf among my flock. One morning, on entering my chamber, the door of which I had been so imprudent as to leave open, I beheld my unworthy pupil making a hearty breakfast on my noble collection. In the first transports of my passion I resolved to strangle it in my arms; but rage and fury soon gave place to pity, when I perceived that its voraciousness had exposed it to the most cruel punishment. On eating the Beetles it had swallowed some of the pins on which they were fixed, and though it made a thousand efforts to throw them up, all its exertions were in vain. The torture which it suffered soon made me forget the devastation it had occasioned. I only thought of affording it relief; but neither my tears, nor all the art of my father’s slaves, whom I had called from all quarters with loud cries, were able to preserve its life.” THE WIDOW MONKEY.[95] The Monkeys in the second division of this genus have the canine teeth not so long as in the other, and the two middle upper incisors are broad. It contains the Widow Monkey.