1 80 THE MONKE Y FAMIL Y. 



better fate. The torrid zone generally gives us a rising and a setting 

 sun of gorgeous splendour, with only a trifling variation in the 

 length of day throughout the whole year; and so warm are the 

 lower regions of this zone, that the sensation of cold may be said to 

 be unknown, saving when paroxysms of ague attack the human 

 frame. In this delightful section of our planet, the traveller's notice 

 is arrested by forests of immeasurable magnitude, where trees of 

 surprising height are in never-failing foliage. On numbers of these 

 trees may be observed, at one and the same time, a profusion 

 of buds and blossoms, and green fruit, and ripe fruit, to the utter 

 astonishment of every European knight-errant who travels amongst 

 them in quest of zoological adventures. Here hang huge nuts and 

 giant pods in vast profusion ; and when the latter have been eaten by 

 the monkeys, or have fallen to the ground, in their over-ripened state, 

 multitudes of other fruit-bearing trees, in other parts of the forest, 

 produce a new supply in rotation, during the whole of the time that 

 the sun is performing his annual course through the well-known signs 

 of the zodiac, so beautifully enumerated by a latin poet : 



"Sunt Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo ; 

 Libraque, Scorpius, Arcitenens, Caper, Amphora, Pisces.*' 



In a word, the vegetable productions of the torrid zone may truly be 

 styled inexhaustible and everlasting. No autumn to arrest their 

 growing vigour, no winter to smite their beauties to the ground, they 

 perform the task assigned to them, under the protecting influence of 

 congenial spring and summer. The year throughout I could scarcely 

 ever detect a tree denuded of its foliage by nature's mandate. So 

 imperceptible was the decay, and the renewal of the leaf in general, 

 that I never should have observed it, had not my eye occasionally 

 wandered over its changing tints, from birth to maturity. Although 

 most of these tropical productions are unpalatable to man, still they 

 are both sweet and nourishing to the birds and quadrupeds of the 

 woods. On one occasion I found a tree covered with ripe figs, on 

 the bank of Camouni creek, a tributary stream to the river Demerara. 

 It was literally crowded with birds and monkeys. These last 

 scampered away along the trees on my near approach, but most 

 of the birds, saving the toucans, remained on the boughs to finish 



