them, to the no great delight of the grandees
under the dais. First we will speak of that
prettiest little creature of all, the Midas;
prettiest always, whether it is the Midas rosalia,
the silky tamarine, or the Midas leoninus, the lion
tamarine—one of the gentlest, most interesting,
and most loving little creatures that ever set
you wondering whether it was a monkey or a
squirrel, or haply some bewitched negro baby,
against which some cruel negro fairy had a spite.
The little silver tamarine, Midas argentatus, is
the most beautiful, as it is the rarest, of the
species, and is kept as a choice treasure and
most beloved pet when by chance found and
taken alive: which is not often, for the creature
is by no means common, though sometimes to
be seen gambolling like a little snow-white
kitten among the branches of the forest trees.
It is very small, only seven inches in length
when full grown, and is covered with long white
silky hairs, with a naked face flesh coloured,
and a blackish tail. It is playful, timid, sensitive,
and affectionate; can be tamed by love,
and for the love of one or two, but never
becomes so tame as to be familiar with strangers; in
fact, it is just like a timid little child, who knows
and loves its nurses, but who shrinks back shyly
from even the kindest friend. There are many
kinds of Midas, and they are all beautiful, and
all gentle, and all playful; differing amongst
each other only by the colour of their coats
and the size of their bodies, and whether naturalists
have called them " lions," or " bears," or
"silky," or " silvery." Very different are the
ugly rusty-brown Couxios, with their queer hair
caps, that look as if they had been just combed
and brushed; and the Howlers of all hues,
"making night hideous" with their dreadful
cries; and the odd, but not wholly unpleasant,
scarlet-faced monkeys, dressed in long white
coats, with faces of vivid scarlet, and grave and
silent as so many judges. But the Parauacá,
the bear-like speckled grey Pithecia hirsuta, is
too affectionate and intelligent not to be a pet
with all who can keep it alive; and the owl-
faced night-ape, the Nyctipithecus, clothed in
soft grey or brown fur, like rabbit-skin, and
with a face like an owl or a tiger-cat,
surrounded by a ruff of whitish fur, is also a pet
of the first order. It is a funny- looking
little creature, very shy at the first, but to be
tamed by kindness, when it becomes a source
of great amusement—as, indeed, are all the
smaller monkeys to those who like them. One,
which Mr. Bates kept, used to hide itself in a
wide-mouthed glass jar when a stranger entered;
but then he did not attempt the system of mere
love and liberty adopted by the Brazilians, who
make pets of even jaguars, which they suffer to
run like puppies free among their children, and
who tame their wild monkeys by letting them
always sleep in their bosoms, or sit on their
heads or shoulders. The little stripe-faced
Nyctipithecus which Mr. Bates kept as his vermin
catcher in ordinary (this species soon clears a
room of cockroaches and spiders, and even of
bats), used to bark like a small dog at night—
they are night creatures, as their name implies—
scampering about the room after the spiders and
cockroaches, which it ate with great gusto. It
came finally to grief and dissolution through the
jealousy of a Caiarára monkey; not a pleasant
pet by any means, being restless, jealous,
discontented, and noisy, who, quarrelling with
poor little owl-face over a fruit that had been
given the latter, settled the business by cracking
the little one's skull with his teeth—owl-face
defending himself only by "clawing out and
hissing like a cat," being a meek-minded being,
not given to fisticuffs.

But the monkeys must not take up all our
time; there are the birds to look at—from the
beautiful little humming-bird poised before a
flower, or hiding away under the broad leaves
of the ferns and forest flowers while it dips itself
in a shallow brook and takes its bath in all
security of joy, to the strange Umbrella-bird
(Cephalopterus ornatus), wearing a third wing
on its head, which it can raise and expand at
pleasure, throwing it out like a fringed
sunshade. Cephalopterus, or wing-head, has also
a neck ornament in the shape of a thick pad of
glossy steel-blue feathers, which grows on a long
fleshy lobe or excrescence. These two peculiarities
are fully developed only in the male, being
simply rudimentary in the female. The Indians
call it the fife-bird, because of its loud piping
note, which Mr. Bates heard; for, after watching
an individual in absolute stillness for some
time, " it drew itself up on its perch, dilated
and waved its glossy breast lappet, and then, in
giving vent to its loud piping note, bowed its
head slowly forwards." The Crax globicera—
a curassow-bird, bearing a round red ball on its
beak—is also a strange-looking creature; so is
the curl-crested toucan, with his sly magpie-like
pate, covered, not by feathers like an ordinary
honest bird, but by "thin horny plates of a
lustrous black colour, curled up at the ends and
resembling shavings of steel or ebony wood, the
curly crest being arranged on the crown in the
form of a wig." These curl-crested toucans
have a note resembling the croaking of a frog;
and, according to an anecdote related by our
author, it would seem that a scream from one
wounded or in distress will bring troops of its
fellows to its aid. He had wounded one, and
in attempting to seize it, it set up a loud scream.
"In an instant, as if by magic, the shady nook
seemed alive with these birds, although there
was certainly none visible when I entered the
thicket. They descended towards me, hopping
from bough to bough, some of them swinging
on the loops and cables of woody lianas, and all
croaking and fluttering their wings like so many
furies." When he killed the wounded bird, and
its screaming therefore ceased, they all went
back to silence and invisibility, disappearing as
suddenly as they had appeared. The great
clumsy bill of the toucan, which has caused so
much discussion, and given rise to so many false
theories and still falser facts, is now seen to be
a natural adaptation of growth to circumstance.
For the toucan, being a fruit-eater, a slow flier,