THE MONKEY-POT^. 119 



kindly provided with a round wooden cover, which becomes 

 loose and lets out the savoury sapucaya nuts inside, to the 

 comfort of all our " poor relations." Ah, when will there 

 arise a Tropic Landseer to draw for us some of the strange 

 fashions of the strange birds and beasts of these lands ? to 

 draw, for instance, the cunning, selfish, greedy grin of delight 

 on the face of some burly, hairy, goitred old red Howler, as he 

 lifts off a " tapa del cacao de monos," a monkey-cacao cover, 

 and looks defiance out of the corners of his winking eyes at 

 his wives and children, cousins and grandchildren, who sit 

 round jabbering and screeching, and, monkey fashion, 

 twisting their heads upside down, as they put their arms 

 round each other s waists to peer over each other's shoulders 

 at the great bully, who must feed himself first as his fee 

 for liavino- roared to them for an hour at sunrise on a tree- 

 top, while they sat on the lower branches and looked up, 

 trembling and delighted at the sound and fury of the idiot 

 sermon. 



What an untried world is here for the artist of every kind ; 

 not merely for the animal painter, for the landscape painter, 

 for the student of human form and attitude, if he chose to 

 live awhile among the still untrained Indians of the Mam, or 

 among the graceful Coohes of Trinidad and Demerara ; but 

 also for the botanical artist, for the man who should study 

 long and carefully the more striking and beautiful of these 



