beneath and more than two feet
long, makes the branches bend down toward the ground, like the
fronds of the palm-trees.'

'The Capuchin monkeys,' he continues, 'are singularly fond of these
"chestnuts of Brazil," and the noise made by the seeds, when the
fruit is shaken as it fell from the tree, excites their appetency in
the highest degree.' He does not, however, believe the 'tale, very
current on the lower Oroonoco, that the monkeys place themselves in
a circle, and by striking the shell with a stone succeed in opening
it.' That they may try is possible enough; for there is no doubt, I
believe, that monkeys--at least the South American--do use stones to
crack nuts; and I have seen myself a monkey, untaught, use a stick
to rake his food up to him when put beyond the reach of his chain.
The impossibility in this case would lie, not in want of wits, but
want of strength; and the monkeys must have too often to wait for
these feasts till the rainy season, when the woody shell rots of
itself, and amuse themselves meanwhile, as Humboldt describes them,
in rolling the fruit about, vainly longing to get their paws in
through the one little hole at its base. The Agoutis, however, and
Pacas, and other rodents, says Humboldt, have teeth and perseverance
to gnaw through the shell; and when the seeds are once out, 'all the
animals of the forest, the monkeys, the manaviris, the squirrels,
the agoutis, the parrots, the macaws, hasten thither to dispute the
prey. They have all strength enough to break the woody covering of
the seeds; they get out the kernel and carry it to the tops of the
trees. "It is their festival also," said the Indians who had
returned from the nut-harvest; and on hearing their complaints of
the animals you perceive that they think themselves alone the
legitimate masters of the forest.'

But if Nature has played the poor monkeys a somewhat tantalising
trick about Brazil nuts, she has been more generous to them in the
case of some other Lecythids, {229} which go by the name of monkey-
pots. Huge trees like their kinsfolk, they are clothed in bark
layers so delicate that the Indians beat them out till they are as
thin as satin-paper, and use them as cigarette-wrappers. They carry
great urn-shaped fruits, big enough to serve for drinking-vessels,
each kindly provided with a round wooden cover, which becomes loose
and lets out the savoury sapucaya nuts inside, to the comfor