of the work is done with a neatness unsurpassable by reiver, ritter or
kateran. The monkey-tax thus collected is quite a calculable percentage of
the crop, and few taxes are more regularly paid. As it goes to
non-producers, its reduction is an object constantly kept in view. The
wretched guns of the natives are, however, but a feeble instrument of
reform. The chassepot may succeed after having finished the rest of its
task, and dispose of the baboons after the settlement of the men. The
former, though not incomparably smaller than the French conscript after a
protracted war, will never be made to bear arms. He is therefore useless to
modern statesmen, and needs to be got rid of.

While the barn is defrauded by these little vegetarians, the barnyard is
laid under tribute by a family of equally unauthorized flesh-eaters--the
panthers. If this large spotted cat, known in other parts of the world as
ounce, jaguar, leopard and chetah, has any choice of diet, it is for veal.
But his appreciation of kid is none the less lively. Lamb, in season, comes
well to him also. As there are many panthers, each of them of "unbounded
stomach," and they can find little to eat in the way of wild quadrupeds,
the destruction they must cause among domestic animals is seen to be
serious. In the Mokuéa neighborhood each village has its panther-killer, an
enterprising man set apart for a profession which sometimes becomes
hereditary. One of these boasts of having killed thirty-six panthers. His
father before him had bagged seventy-five, and he hoped before pulling his
final trigger to have done as well. This expectation was a just one, as at
twenty-eight he had already nearly halved the paternal count. The method of
hunting is very simple. The sportsman fixes a bleating little victim from
the herd at the foot of a tree, and climbs with his flint gun into the
branches. Had the North African beast the arboreal habits of the South
African tree-leopard or the American jaguar, this proceeding would be less
effectual with him. But he can neither climb nor reflect like his