"The caiarára is very frequently kept as a pet in the houses of natives. I kept one myself for about a year, which accompanied me in my voyages, and became very familiar, coming to me always on wet nights to share my blanket. It keeps the house where it is kept in a perpetual uproar. When alarmed or hungry, or excited by envy, it screams piteously. It is always making some noise or other, often screwing up its mouth, and uttering a succession of loud notes resembling a whistle. Mine lost my favor at last by killing, in one of his jealous fits, another and much choicer pet,--the nocturnal, owl-faced monkey. Some one had given this a fruit which the other coveted: so the two got to quarrelling. The owl-faced fought only with his paws, clawing out, and hissing, like a cat: the other soon obtained the mastery, and, before I could interfere, finished his rival by cracking its skull with its teeth. Upon this I got rid of him." THE COAITA. "The coaita is a large, black monkey, covered with coarse hair, and having the prominent parts of the face of a tawny, flesh-colored hue. The coaitas are called by some French zoölogists spider-monkeys, on account of the length and slenderness of their body and limbs. In these apes, the tail, as a prehensile organ, reaches its highest degree of perfection; and, on this account, it would perhaps be correct to consider the coaita as the extreme development of the American type of apes. "The tail of the coaita is endowed with a wonderful degree of flexibility. It is always in motion, coiling and uncoiling like the trunk of an elephant, and grasping whatever comes within reach. "The flesh of this monkey is much esteemed by the natives in this part of the country; and the military commandant every week sends a negro hunter to shoot one for his table. One day I went on a coaita-hunt, with a negro-slave to show me the way. When in the deepest part of the ravine, we heard a rustling sound in the trees overhead; and Manoel soon pointed out a coaita to me. There was something human-like in its appearance, as the lean, shaggy creature moved deliberately among the branches at a great height. I fired, but, unfortunately, only wounded it. It fell, with a crash, headlong, about twenty or thirty feet, and then caught a bough with its tail, which grasped it instantaneously; and there the animal remained suspended in mid-air. Before I could reload, it recovered itself, and mounted nimbly to the topmost branches, out of the reach of a fowling-piece, where we could perceive the poor thing apparently probing the wound with its fingers." THE TAME COAITA.