CHAPTER -IX 



CONTROLLED PUPATION 



1 



"^HERE is a tree in the Guiana forest which, for lack of a 

 better name, I call the vermilion-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 foliage, and 

 in April, a vermilion fruit. This fruit is lime-shaped, two inches 

 in length by one and one-quarter inches wide, and consists of a moder- 

 ately tough pubescent vermilion 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, gorg- 

 ing 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 vermilion- 

 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 scat- 

 tered abundantly among the rotting vegetation on the ground for a 

 hundred feet in every direction. 



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



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