34 To the River Plate and Back 



acquaintance in Brazil. Breadfruits were abundant. 

 So were Golden-apples, as they are called, pleasant to 

 the eye, and delightful to the palate, but the inner 

 seed armed with wiry, projecting, wooden spines, which 

 compel the eater, when devouring the juicy pulp, to 

 proceed as circumspectly as one who is eating shad. 

 There were yams, and cassava-meal, fresh ginger in 

 short a multitude of things which we all have read 

 about, but which it was pleasant to see as they came 

 from the fields and gardens. 



In the northeastern part of Barbados there exists a 

 small colony of a little green African monkey, the mem- 

 bers of which are protected. The species (Lasiopyga 

 callitrichus) is one of the commonest in captivity, and 

 the usual attendant of the Italian organ-grinder. It 

 has become naturalized not only in Barbados, but also 

 in St. Kitts and Nevis. It is a remarkable fact that 

 no monkeys allied to those of the South American main- 

 land exist to-day in any of the West Indian Islands, 

 except Trinidad, where a species of Howling Monkey 

 (Alouatta insulanus) occurs. Whether the monkeys, 

 which may have existed in the West Indies, were long 

 ago exterminated, as have been the Indians, is a ques- 

 tion which it is difficult at this late date to determine. 

 Both the geological and the written records relating to 

 the mammalian fauna of the Antilles are very defective. 

 Many facts tend to show quite conclusively that the 

 Greater Antilles must have had at one time a connec- 

 tion with the American mainland. The recent dis- 

 covery in Cuba by Mr. Barnum Brown of the American 

 Museum of Natural History of the remains of at least 

 two species of sloths in the bottom of a pool from which 

 he pumped away the water, and the discovery in the 

 Isle of Pines by Mr. G. A. Link of the Carnegie Museum 



