Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/330

 the features up to the roots of the hair on the forehead and temples, and down to the neck, including the flabby cheeks which hang down below the jaws. The animal, in this condition, looks at a short distance as though some one had laid a thick coat of red paint on its countenance. The death of my pet was slow; during the last twenty-four hours it lay prostrate, breathing quickly, its chest strongly heaving; the colour of its face became gradually paler, but was still red when it expired. As the hue did not quite disappear until two or three hours after the animal was quite dead, I judged that it was not exclusively due to the blood, but partly to a pigment beneath the skin which would probably retain its colour a short time after the circulation had ceased.

After seeing much of the morose disposition of the Uakarí, I was not a little surprised one day at a friend's house to find an extremely lively and familiar individual of this species. It ran from an inner chamber straight towards me after I had sat down on a chair, climbed my legs and nestled in my lap, turning round and looking up with the usual monkey's grin, after it had made itself comfortable. It was a young animal which had been taken when its mother was shot with a poisoned arrow; its teeth were incomplete, and the face was pale and mottled, the glowing scarlet hue not supervening in these animals before mature age; it had also a few long black hairs on the eyebrows and lips. The frisky little fellow had been reared in the house amongst the children, and allowed to run about freely, and take its meals with the rest of the household. There are few animals which the Brazilians of these