Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/331

 villages have not succeeded in taming. I have even seen young jaguars running loose about a house, and treated as pets. The animals that I had, rarely became familiar, however long they might remain in my possession, a circumstance due no doubt to their being kept always tied up.

The Uakarí is one of the many species of animals which are classified by the Brazilians as "mortál," or of delicate constitution, in contradistinction to those which are "duro," or hardy. A large proportion of the specimens sent from Ega die before arriving at Pará, and scarcely one in a dozen succeeds in reaching Rio Janeiro alive. It appears, nevertheless, that an individual has once been brought in a living state to England, for Dr. Gray relates that one was exhibited in the gardens of the Zoological Society in 1849. The difficulty it has of accommodating itself to changed conditions probably has some connection with the very limited range or confined sphere of life of the species in its natural state, its native home being an area of swampy woods, not more than about sixty square miles in extent, although no permanent barrier exists to check its dispersal, except towards the south, over a much wider space. When I descended the river in 1859, we had with us a tame adult Uakarí, which was allowed to ramble about the vessel, a large schooner. When we reached the mouth of the Rio Negro, we had to wait four days whilst the custom-house officials at Barra, ten miles distant, made out the passports for our crew, and during this time the schooner lay close to the shore, with its bowsprit secured to the trees on the bank. Well, one morning,