A Walk in the Forest 45 



''You mean, the way they catch birds with salt?" 

 asked Edna. 



This provoked a hearty laugh at Henry's expense 

 and he was forced to explain that in some places 

 monkeys are caught through their love for sugar, 

 which is placed in heavy jars with narrow necks and, 

 when a monkey puts his hand into a jar and gets it 

 full of sugar, he prefers to get caught rather than 

 let the sugar go. 



"You can try anything once," said William, *'but 

 we have no heavy jars and no sugar. Still, we have 

 narrow-necked gourds and we have some sugarcane 

 in the closet which we can boil, I suppose. A mon- 

 key likes bananas, too, but I reckon they are so 

 slick that they would slip out of his hand if he got 

 in a tight place and squeezed them a little too hard." 



When the details were all decided, they got out 

 some sugarcane and cut it up into small pieces and 

 put them in a little water to boil; then drained off 

 the liquid, added shavings of cocoanut meat, and 

 boiled it down to a syrup. While this was being 

 done, a large gourd was cleaned out and partly filled 

 with sand and gravel to give it the proper weight, 

 and a piece of banana leaf pushed in on top of the 

 sand to keep the "syrup of cocoanut" clean. This 

 syrupy mixture was certainly sticky and, if a mon- 



