304 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



bringing home, even a head alone, with features 

 as perfect as those of that which I have brought, 

 far from being envious of him, I should consider 

 him a modern Alcides, fully entitled to register 

 a thirteenth labour. Now if, on the other hand, 

 we argue, that this head in question has had all 

 its original features destroyed, and a set of new 

 ones given to it, by what means has this hitherto 

 unheard-of change been effected? Nobody in our 

 museums has as yet been able to restore the nat- 

 ural features to stuffed animals ; and he who has 

 any doubts of this, let him take a living cat or 

 dog, and compare them with a stuffed cat or dog 

 in any of the first-rate museums. A momentary 

 glance of the eye would soon settle his doubts on 

 this head. 



If I have succeeded in effacing the features of 

 a brute, and putting those of a man in their place, 

 we might be entitled to say, that the sun of Pro- 

 teus has risen to our museums : — 



"Unius hie faciem, facies transformat in omnes; 



Nunc homo, nunc tigris; nunc equa, nunc mulier.** 



If I have effected this, we can now give to one 

 side of the skin of a man's face the appearance 

 of eighty years, and to the other side that of 

 blooming seventeen. We could make the forehead 

 and eyes serene in youthful beauty, and shape 

 the mouth and jaws to the features of a malicious 

 old ape. Here is a new field opened to the ad- 

 venturous and experimental naturalist: I have 

 trodden it up and down till I am almost weary. 

 To get at it myself I have groped through an 



