SAKI

any of the long-tailed, arboreal South American monkeys of the genera Pithecia and Chiropotes, family Cebidae. Sakis of the genus Pithecia are approximately 3050 cm (1220 inches) long without the bushy, tapering tail of 2555 cm. They are covered with long, coarse hair that falls like a hood on the head and a cape over the shoulders. The pale-headed saki (P. pithecia) is black with whitish hair surrounding the dark muzzle of the male. The monk saki (P. monachus), the other species, is grizzled gray. Monk sakis are diurnal, live in pairs or small groups, and feed on fruit and possibly small animals. Births are single; the young at first cling to the female's belly and later are carried on her back until they are able to travel independently. Monk sakis are gentle in captivity but nervous and difficult to keep. Bearded sakis (Chiropotes) are less known. Members of the two species are about 4045 cm (1618 inches) long excluding the heavily furred tail, which grows to 3540 cm. They have dense coats of long, primarily black hair. They have rounded tails, and their hair parts in the centre of the head, grows thickly along the sides of the face, and extends into a full, heavy beard. Bearded sakis are diurnal and are thought to live in small groups and feed on fruit. born Dec. 18, 1870, Akyab, Burma [now Myanmar] died Nov. 14, 1916, near Beaumont-Hamel, France pseudonym of H(ector) H(ugh) Munro Scottish writer and journalist whose stories depict the Edwardian social scene with a flippant wit and power of fantastic invention used both to satirize social pretension, unkindness, and stupidity and to create an atmosphere of horror. Munro was the son of an officer in the Burma police. At the age of two he was sent to live with his aunts near Barnstaple, Devon, England. He later took revenge on their strictness and lack of understanding by portraying tyrannical aunts in many of his stories about children. He was educated at Exmouth and at Bedford grammar school, and in 1893 he joined the Burma police but was invalided out. Turning to journalism, he wrote political satires for the Westminster Gazette and in 1900 published The Rise of the Russian Empire, a serious historical work. After acting as foreign correspondent for The Morning Post in the Balkans, Russia, and Paris, in 1908 he settled in London, writing short stories and sketches: Reginald (1904), Reginald in Russia (1910), The Chronicles of Clovis (1912), and Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914). Written in a style studded with epigrams and with well-contrived plots often turning on practical jokes or surprise endings, his stories reveal a vein of cruelty in their author and a self-identification with the enfant terrible. Among his most frequently anthologized works are Tobermory, The Open Window, Sredni Vashtar, Laura, and The Schartz-Metterklume Method. His novel The Unbearable Bassington (1912) describes the adventures of a fastidious and likable but maladjusted hero, in a manner anticipating that of the early work of the English satirist Evelyn Waugh. Munro was killed in action in World War I.