228 ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



their ideas. Arsenic has no perceptible taste or odor, 

 and an ounce of it mixed with a bushel of cornmeal will 

 destroy a cartload of sewer-rats in a single day; but all 

 professional vermin-killers agree that such receipts lose 

 their efficacy in a very short time. Somehow or other 

 the survivors manage to trace the mischief to its cause ; 

 and old rats have been watched in the act of driving their 

 young from a dish of poisoned hash. When the British 

 first effected a settlement in Singapore, the traffic in 

 monkeys soon became a regular branch of industry. 

 The ubiquitous Chinamen used to go on trapping ex- 

 peditions to the hills, at a time of the year when the 

 mountain macaques were rather hard up for provisions 

 and could be baited with " fuddle-cakes," — i.e., rice-bread 

 soaked in a mixture of sugar and rum. The trapper 

 used to hide behind a tree and let the monkey assem- 

 blage enjoy his bounty till their antics suggested that it 

 was time for him to rush in, like Cyrus into the banquet- 

 hall of Belshazzar. Experience, however, soon taught 

 the little mountaineers to change their tactics. Instead 

 of devouring the fuddle-cakes on the spot, they learned 

 to gather them up and defer the feast till they reached a 

 retreat where they could hope to be left alone in their 

 glory. But the trappers, too, have since changed their 

 plan. They manufacture a sort of narrow-necked jars, 

 about the size of sarsaparilla-bottles, and, after filling 

 them with a melange of syrup and alcohol, they tie them 

 firmly to the root of a tree and withdraw out of sight. 



