52 



POPULAR ECONOMIC BOTANY. 



Many amusing tales are told of the monkeys^ which are 

 so fond of this fruit that they will patiently hammer the 

 capsule for hours with a stone^ in order to obtain the en- 

 closed nuts. They watch the fall of the nuts from the trees 

 with great eagerness ; and should one of the capsules bursty 

 it is the signal for an amusing scramble. Helter-skelter 

 rush the quadrumanous sentinels of a hundred lofty branches^ 

 swinging themselves from bough to bough with their pre- 

 hensile tails until they close upon the precious juvias^ for 

 which they fight with a determination which furnishes another 

 point in their resemblance to the human race. The In- 

 dians are said to make use of the imitative propensities of 

 the monkey in order to obtain the castanha crop : they pelt 

 stones and other missiles at the monkeys^ who^ in return, 

 gather the capsules of the Bertholetia and hurl them at their 

 human opponents. By this means large quantities of these 

 nuts are collected and transferred to the boats. The prin- 

 cipal locality for the Para nuts is on the river Aripecuru, 

 a branch of the Amazon ; the time for collecting them is 

 winter, when troops of Indian castanheiros ascend the river 

 to obtain the harvest of nuts, upon which they depend for 

 the yearns subsistence. They frequently constitute the whole 

 cargo of vessels of considerable burden, and the quantity 



