326 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



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 natural 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 Proteus has risen to our 

 museums : 



" Unius hie faciem, facies transformat in omnes ; 

 Nunc homo, nunc tigris ; mine 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 

 adventurous 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 alley, which may be 

 styled, in the words of Ovid, 



"Arduus, obliquus, caligine densus opaca. " 



I pray thee, gentle reader, let me out a while. Time 

 passes on apace and I want to take thee to have a peep 

 at the spots where mines are supposed to exist in Guiana. 

 As the story of this singular head has, probably, not been 

 made out to thy satisfaction, perhaps, (I may say it nearly 

 in Corporal Trim's words,) on some long and dismal winter's 

 evening, but not now, I may tell thee more about it ; 



