254 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



conjux detinet," still I would fain crave a little repose. 

 I have already been a long while errant : 



" Longa mihi exilia, et vastum marts aequor aravi, 

 Ne mandate mihi, nam ego sum defessus agendo." 



Should anybody be induced to go, great and innumer- 

 able are the discoveries yet to be made in those remote 

 wilds ; and should he succeed in bringing home, even 

 a head alone, with features as perfect as those of that 

 which I have brought, far from being envious of him, I 

 should consider him a modern Alcides, fully entitled to 

 register a thirteenth labour. !N"ow if, on the other 

 hand, we argue, that this head in question has had all 

 its original features destroyed, and a set of new ones 

 given to it, by what means has this hitherto unheard- 

 of change been effected ? Nobody in any of our 

 museums has 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 omnea ; 

 Nunc homo, nune tigris ; nunc 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 youth- 

 ful beauty, and shape the mouth and jaws to the 

 features of a malicious old ape. Here is a new field 



