[Philip]

The small size of the flask (if it is indeed a powder flask) may be explainable by the fact that for the very fine-grained poweder used in priming the flash-pan, you don't need a great quantity of it at any one time, especially on a gun made for hunting. I've examined a number of those crude smallbore carbines with pistolgrip stocks and locally made flintlock mechanisms, what passes for the priming pan holds very little powder. You see these guns occasionally, they came here as souvenirs of the Vietnam War. The weapons were used by hill tribes in Vietnam, Laos, and parts of Cambodia and variations can be found in Burma and China's southernmost border provinces.

Have you showed the thing to a professor of vertebrate zoology, specializing in primates? Maybe there is such an expert on the staff of, or consulting to, one of our major zoos.

This is venturing a bit OT, but you'd like to know that monkey is a delicacy in Laos as it is in Thailand. I have some Lao friends here in southern Calif., and a couple of these guys say that monkey meat is the best there is. One of them loves it so much that put enough beers in him, he starts concocting all these elaborate plans to infiltrate the San Diego Zoo after hours with a large gunnysack and a small-caliber pistol. Just the thing to send the PETA guys and gals on the warpath, I'm sure, haha!