104 CARIPI AND THE BAY OF MARA/JO. Cuap. V. 
rocks, over which the surge raged furiously. Raimundo sat at the 
stern, rigid and silent; his eye steadily watching the prow of the boat. 
It was almost worth the risk and discomfort of the passage to witness — 
the seamanlike ability displayed by Indians on the water. The little 
boat rode beautifully, rising well with each wave, and in the course of 
an hour and a half we arrived at Caripi, thoroughly tired and wet 
through to the skin. 
I will here make a few observations regarding the Paca and the 
‘Cutia, although there is little to relate of their habits in addition to 
what is contained in natural history books. The Paca is the Ccelogenys 
Paca of zoologists, and the Cutia the Dasyprocta Aguti, or a local variety 
of that species. Both differ much from our hare and rabbit, which 
belong to the same order of animals, their fur being coarse and bristly, 
and their ears short and broad. ‘Their flesh is widely different in taste 
from that of our English Rodents. The meat of the Paca, in colour, 
grain, and flavour, resembles young pork ; it is much drier, however, and 
less palatable than pork. The skin is thick, and boils down to a jelly, 
when it makes a capital soup with rice. Both animals live exclusively 
in the forests, both dry and moist, being found, perhaps, most abund- 
antly in the ygapos and islands. When these are flooded in the wet 
season, they escape to the drier lands by swimming across the inter- 
vening channels. At Murucupi I saw several semi-domesticated indi- 
viduals of both species, which had been caught when young, and were 
suffered to run freely about the houses. The Paca was not so familiar 
as the Cutia, which generally makes use of a hole or a box in a corner 
for a hiding place, and comes out readily to be fed by children. I once 
saw a tame Cutia running about the woods, nibbling the fruits fallen 
from the Inaja palm-tree (Maximiliana regia), and when I tried to catch 
it, instead of betaking itself to the thicket, it ran off to the house of its 
owners, which was about two hundred yards off. When feeding, this 
species sometimes sits upright, and takes its food in the forepaws like a 
squirrel. 
The Paca and the Cutia belong to a peculiar family of the Rodent 
order which is confined to South America, and which connects the 
Rodents to the Pachydermata, the order to which the elephant, horse, 
and hog belong. One of the principal points of distinction from other 
families is the strong, blunt form of the claws, which in one of the 
forms (the Capybara) are very broad, and approximate in shape to the 
hoofs of the Pachydermata. On this account the family is named by 
some authors Subungulati ; the great division of mammalian animals to 
which the Pachydermata belong being called, in the classifications of 
the best author, Ungulata, after the hoofed feet, which are considered 
their leading character. It is an interesting fact that the pachyder- 
matous animal most nearly allied to the Rodents is also American, 
although found only in the fossil state—namely, the Toxodon, which 
Professor Owen states resembled the Rodentia in its dentition. The 
Toxodon, on the other hand, was nearly related to the elephant, of 
which the same distinguished zoologist says, ‘‘ Several particulars in its 
organisation indicate an affinity to the Rodentia.” ‘These facts impart a 
high degree of interest to these semi-hoofed American Rodents, because 
