FOUR-FINGERED MONKEY. 11 



great rains, and variable winds, but delight in the 

 serene and wholesome climate of the south. You 

 may see them bounding from branch to branch 

 among the delicate white blossoms of the Cwsal- 

 pinia brasiletto, or Brazil wood, which are numerous 

 in the country to which they gave a name. You 

 may also watch their agile movements along the 

 bush ropes in the great forests of Demerara, which 

 serve as step-ladders from one tree to another. 

 These amazing cables, which are sometimes nearly as 

 thick as a man's body, may be seen either twisting 

 like corkscrews round a lofty tree, and lifting their 

 heads above its summits, or joining tree to tree, and 

 branch to branch. Others, descending from a top- 

 most bough, or drooping from out the fissure of 

 some high rock, take root as soon as they touch 

 the ground, and appear like shrouds and stays sup- 

 porting the main-mast of a line-of-battle ship; 

 while others, sending out parallel, oblique, or hori- 

 zontal shoots, remind you of what travellers call 

 a matted forest. Oftentimes a tree, uprooted by 

 the whirlwind, is stopped in its fall, at perhaps 

 an elevation of a hundred feet, by one of these 

 natural cables. Hence it is that travellers account 

 for the phenomenon of seeing trees not only alive, 

 but yielding leaves and fruit, though far from per- 

 pendicular, and with their trunks inclined to every 

 degree from the meridian to the horizon. Thus 

 upheld, their heads remain firmly supported by the 

 bush-rope, while the roots soon refix in the earth; 

 and frequently a shoot rises from near the base of 

 the inclined trunk, and in time becomes a fine tree. 

 Numerous wild animals are seen to gambol up and 



