CHAPTER XXXIII 



CONTROLLED PUPATION 



There is a tree in the Guiana forest which, for lack of a 

 better name, I call the vermillion-nut. This tree ranks high 

 in the scale of giants. It towers above one, reaching more 

 than a hundred feet above the forest floor where it throws 

 out its rather flattened boughs that bear a thick mass of foli- 

 age, and in April, a vermillion fruit. This fruit is lime 

 shaped, two inches in length by one and a quarter inches wide 

 and consists of a moderately tough, pubescent vermillion 

 shell, guarding the soft, greenish inner pulp that surrounds 

 the true nut. The pulp is soft and quite sweet, but incipient 

 and the nut is as hard as a fresh almond and slightly over 

 twice as large. Even to botanists its name is unknown. 



Troups of howling monkeys make daily visits to these 

 trees, gorging themselves for hours on the juicy pulp and 

 throwing the shells, bearing their teeth marks, to the ground 

 below. One must either lie upon the back or suffer a cramped 

 neck to observe them feeding in the top-most branches. Even 

 then they are often screened from one's sight by the masses 

 of heavy foliage that characterize the vermillion-nut. 



Other animals find the food to their liking also. Agouti, 

 smaller species of monkeys, and a host of wild bees feed daily 

 beneath the everlasting twilight of these branches. One 

 might spend a year studying the creatures that feed upon 

 the fruit which is often scattered abundantly among the rot- 

 ting vegetation on the ground for a hundred feet in every 

 direction. 



In the latter part of April, I came upon a band of howl- 

 ers feasting in one of these trees. They were easily one hun- 

 dred and twenty-five feet from the ground, yet, quite uncon- 

 scious of the dizzy height, they reached here and there for 



