IN THE EYE OF DAY 193 



half -inch spikes which are tough and sharp. It 

 grows on trees fully sixty feet in height whose 

 trunks are bare of limbs except at the very top, and 

 when the fruit ripens it drops to the ground. So, 

 as the season approaches, natives erect small huts 

 under the tree or nearby, from which they watch 

 for the falling fruit. Those who are fortunate 

 enough to have such trees growing on their own 

 land, practically live on the income derived from 

 the sale of the durian, for in the Peninsular mar- 

 ket it brings the highest price of any Eastern fruit. 

 In the jungle edge, where these trees have no own- 

 ership, the race to build the first hut, and thus 

 establish proprietary interest in the falling fruit, 

 is equal in intensity to an Oklahoma land rush; 

 and in the jungle the natives must compete also 

 with the wild beasts that share man's fondness for 

 this extraordinary fruit. Once, in the jungle, as 

 I sat smoking, puzzling out some lost seladang 

 tracks, a falling durian attracted my attention ; the 

 nearby trees seemed alive with monkeys racing to 

 reach the ground first. One monkey, that had 

 been left at the post, so to say, deliberately dove 

 from the top of the tree where he sat, fully forty 

 feet into the top of a smaller tree below, whence 

 he swung to the ground; but, though he beat out 

 the others the durian had disappeared. A small 

 leopard-like creature had sneaked off the fruit, 



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