The Naturalist in La Plata

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en with her progeny, numbering eight or nine, with as many on her back as

ic, a strange thing once happened in Buenos Ayres. The coypú was

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the coypú. The result was that the animals increased and multiplied exceedingly, and, abandoning their aquatic habits, they became terrestrial and migr

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if the infection, wide-spread, incurable, and swift as the wind in its course, should attack the too-numerous sheep! And who knows what mysterious, unheard-of retributions that

abits resembling its domestic pied relation the guinea pig. It loves to run on clean ground, and on the pampas makes little rat-roads all about its hiding-place, which little roads tell a story to the fox, and such like;

s called tuco-tuco from its voice, and oculto from its habits; for it is a dweller underground, and requires a loose, sandy soil in which, like the m

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their anvils, first with strong measured strokes, then with lighter and faster, and with a swing and rhythm as if the little men were beating in time to some rude chant unheard above the surface. How came these isolated colonies of a species so subterranean in habits, and r

in its preying habits, its presence on the pampa is not surprising; but probably only an extreme abundance of large mammalian prey, which has not existed in recent times, could have, tempted an animal of the river and forest-loving habits of the jaguar to colonize t

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d; it is called wood-cat, and, as the name would seem to indi

mmer and with a sharper nose, and lias a much brighter red colour. At night when camping out I have heard its dismal screams, but the screamer was sought in vain; while from the gauchos of the frontier I could only learn that it is a harmless, shy, solitary animal, that ever flies to remoter wilds from its destroyer, man. They offered me a skin--what more could I want? Simple souls! it wa

ing weasels, intensely black in colour, and grey on the back and