These apes are not docile, and, notwithstanding their comparatively large foreheads, they are far beneath the capuchin apes in intelligence. When they feel well, they purr like a cat; when frightened, they utter a sharp, shrill, palatal sound; if angry, they scream like a magpie. They were usually brought to me from the sea-shore, where they used to sport in the most lively manner among the awarra palms, never seeming to mind the long, sharp thorns with which these trees are covered. The Indians shoot the mothers while they are carrying the young on their backs, or else they shake the young from the trees after the mothers have set them down. Males are rarely taken, but nearly all that are caught are females.
I had at several times specimens of another pretty ape, the manaku (Pithecia leucocephala), called by the French maman dinan, and arighi by the Caribs. It is not larger than the squirrel-ape, but seems to be twice as thick, on account of its long hair. The male is dark-gray and covered with long hair, with a hairy and bushy tail about ten inches long. The light-yellowish, hairy face looks like a mask, beneath which the black nose and the mouth are strongly marked. The female is brownish. This monkey is easily tamed, but is always shy and melancholy. It lives in troops of not more than ten members, in the deep woods. It is quite rare.
These eight monkeys are the only species that live in Dutch Guiana, no others being known, even to the Indians, Such broad streams as the Amazon, Orinoco, and Rio Negro seem to make a separation between species, so that mammalia, even when the plant-life is alike on both sides, are wanting on one side of the waters while they are common on the other side.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from Das Ausland.
| SKETCH OF CLEVELAND ABBE. |
THE name of Cleveland Abbe is especially associated with the installation of the meteorological service and weather forecasts of the United States Signal Service, and he has been prominently active in the movement to establish a uniform standard of time for the American continent, which should also be in conformity with the standards of other nations.
Professor Abbe was born in New York city, December 3, 1838. He is a son of the late George Waldo Abbe, who was for many years prominent in the business life of New York, and closely identified with its principal charitable organizations. He received his academical education at the New York Free Academy, now College of the City of New York, where he made a most honorable record for diligence and fidelity in his studies, or to use the words of one of his classmates, as "a young man who was interested in his work, and anxious to learn.
