484 THE CHINCHILLA. 



had already killed and begun to eat one of her offspring, has been seen to leave the half -eaten 

 body and to run eagerly to a pan of water which was placed in her hutch. It may easily be 

 supposed that when an animal is obliged to afford a constant supply of liquid nourishment to 

 her young, she is forced to imbibe a sufficiency of fluid to enable her to comply with the ever 

 recurring demands of her offspring. 



Rabbits are terribly destructive animals, as is too well known to all residents near a warren, 

 and are sad depredators in field, garden, and plantation, destroying in very wantonness hun- 

 dreds of plants which they do not care to eat. They do very great damage to young trees, 

 delighting in stripping them of the tender bark as far as they can reach while standing on 

 their hind feet. Sometimes they eat the bark, but in many cases they leave it in heaps upon 

 the ground, having chiselled it from the tree on which it grew, and to which it afforded 

 nourishment, merely for the sake of exercising their teeth and keeping them in proper order, 

 just as a cat delights in clawing the legs of chairs and tables. 



When the Rabbits have begun to devastate a plantation, they will continue their destruc- 

 tive amusement until they have killed every tree in the place, unless they are effectually 

 checked. There are only two methods of saving the trees one of killing all the Rabbits, and 

 the other by making them disgusted with their employment. The latter plan is generally 

 the most feasible, and can be attained by painting each tree with a strong infusion of tobacco, 

 mixed with a sufficiency of clay and other substances to make it adhere to the bark. This 

 mixture should be copiously applied to the first three feet of every tree, so that the Rabbit 

 cannot find any portion of the bark that is not impregnated with the nauseous compound, 

 and is an effectual preservative against their attacks. 



In their normal state of freedom, Rabbits feed exclusively on vegetable food, but in 

 domestication they will eat a very great variety of substances. Many of my own Rabbits 

 were very fond of sweetmeats, and would nibble a piece of hardbake with great enjoyment, 

 though they were always much discomposed by the adhesive nature of their strange diet, and 

 used to shake their heads violently from side to side when they found themselves unable to 

 disengage their teeth. They would also eat tallow candles, a fact which I discovered acci- 

 dentally, by seeing them devour a candle-end that had fallen out of an old lantern. These 

 curious predilections were the more unaccountable, because the animals were most liberally 

 supplied with food, and were also permitted to run in the kitchen garden for a limited time 

 daily, and to feed upon the growing lettuces, parsley, carrots, and other vegetables, as they 

 pleased. 



As a general fact, the Rabbit has a great antipathy to the hare, so that the two animals 

 are seldom, if ever, seen in close proximity. The possibility of a hybrid progeny between the 

 two species was, until late years, entirely denied. There are, however, several accidental 

 instances of such a phenomenon, and in every case the father has been a Rabbit and the 

 mother a hare. There are many examples of young Rabbits which possess much of the color- 

 ing and general aspect of the hare, but these are almost invariably the offspring of domes- 

 ticated Rabbits which have been turned into a warren. 



In its native state, the fur of the Rabbit is of nearly uniform brown, but when the animal 

 is domesticated, its coat assumes a variety of hues, such as pure white, jetty black, pied, dun, 

 slaty -gray, and many other tints. 



THE CHINCHILLA, so well known for its exquisitely soft and delicate fur, belongs to the 

 group of animals which are known to zoologists under the title of Jerbodise, and which are 

 remarkable for the great comparative length of their hinder limbs, and their long, hair-clothed 

 tails. 



The Chinchilla is an inhabitant of Southern America, living chiefly among the higher 

 mountainous districts, where its thick silken fur is of infinite service in protecting it from the 

 cold. It is a burrowing animal, digging its subterranean homes in the valleys which intersect 

 the hilly country in which it lives, and banding together in great numbers in certain favored 

 localities. The food of the Chinchilla is exclusively of a vegetable nature, and consists chiefly 

 of various bulbous roots, which it disinters by means of its powerful fossorial paws. While 



