274 Mr. W. S. MacLeay's Notes on Capromys, 



the negroes will follow a sportsman in order to point out the Hutlas to 

 him, knowing full well that it is a game that will be abandoned to them 

 when killed. At night these animals are lively, moving about in search 

 of their food. They are almost all destroyed about the Havana,* but in 

 the interior they are still very common. 



I have Uttle to observe on what Desmarest says of the only species known 

 to him, the Capromys Fournieri. The account is drawn up with his 

 usual accuracy. He is wrong, however, in saying that the species has a 

 repugnance to animal food. I soon found that the animal in my posses- 

 sion was very fond of Lizards of the genus Anolis, which he caught in 

 my garden with very great dexterity, eating off the feet first, to prevent 

 the reptile's escape, and then beginning at the head and devouring the 

 whole body, leaving only the skin. Observing this, I tried him with 

 meat, and I found him to prefer it even to his favourite mangos. In fact, 

 this species is as omnivorous as a Rat. Desmarest is wrong also in saying 

 that it never bites. Two of the other species are very savage, and bite 

 severely, and the Capromys Fournieri will bite when it is incommoded or 

 handled carelessly by a person it does not know. In other respects M. 

 Desmarest' s description of the only species he knew is excellent. The 

 animal indeed is one of the most entertaining sagacious little quadrupeds 

 I know. Full of courage, and quite plantigrade, it is a bear in minia- 

 ture, at least much more like a bear than a boar, to which M. Desmarest 

 compares it. But I leave the accurate description of the several species 

 to you and Dr. Horsfield. In the mean time I shall translate for you what 

 Oviedo says on the three species which I have now alive. It is truly sin- 

 gular that these animals should have remained for so many centuries un- 

 til now unknown, in spite of such excellent descriptions by Oviedo, and 

 notwithstanding their being so celebrated in the early voyages of Colum- 

 bus as the principal animal food he found used by the Indians of Hispa- 

 iiola, Cuba, and Jamaica. 



Oviedo, in his Twelfth Book, says, " The present book shall be short 

 " in what relates to this and the other islands, for there are very few 

 " quadrupeds in them ; but in the second and third parts of my work, 



* Columbus found the Uiia in the Bahama Islands on his first arrival, but I 

 believe the species is extinct there now. 



