With regard to animal life in the Amazonian forests, it appears that there is a great variety of mammals, birds, and reptiles, but they are very shy, and widely scattered. Brazil is poor in terrestrial animals, and the species are of small size. "The huntsman would be disappointed who expected to find here flocks of animals similar to the buffalo herds of North America, or the swarms of antelopes and herds of ponderous pachyderms of southern Africa." It has already been observed that the mammals of Brazil are, for the most part, arboreal in their habits; this is especially the case with the monkeys, or _Cebidae_, a family of quadrumamous animals peculiar to the new world. The reader may observe the habits of some species of this group in the monkey-house of the Zoological Society's Gardens in Regent's Park. The strong muscular tail, with its naked palm under the tip, which many of the Cebidae possess, renders them peculiarly well adapted to a forest life. Mr. Bates states that thirty-eight species of this family of monkey inhabit the Amazon region, and considers the Coaitás, or spider-monkeys, "as the extreme development of the American type of apes." The flesh of one species of Coaitás is much esteemed as an article of food by the natives in some parts of the country. The Indians, we are told, are very fund of Coaitás as pets. Some of our readers are doubtless acquainted with the name of Madame Maria Sibylla Merian, a German lady who was born about the middle of the seventeenth century. She was much devoted to the study of natural history, and travelled to Surinam for the purpose of making drawings of its animal productions; many of these drawings are now in the British Museum. This estimable lady, amongst other curiosities of natural history, affirmed the two following ones:--1. The lantern-fly (_Fulgora lanternaria_) emits so strong a light from its body as to enable a person in the night-time to read a newspaper by it. 2. The large spider (_Mygale_) enters the nests of the little humming-birds, and destroys the inmates. It would occupy too much time to tell of the mass of evidence which was adduced in denial of these recorded facts, but, suffice it to say that Madame Merian was set down as an arch-heretic and inventor, and that no credit was attached to her statements. With regard to the first-named heresy, the opinion of modern zoologists is, that there is nothing at all improbable in the circumstance of the Fulgora emitting a strong light, as luminous properties are known to exist in other insects, but that the fact has been rather over-colored by the imagination of the worthy lady. As to the second question, about the bird-destroying propensities of the Mygale, let us hear the testimony of so thoroughly trustworthy a witness as Mr. Bates: