Appendix. 385 
easily, which birds have, and being more persecuted by man, 
they do not often disport themselves unrestrainedly in his 
presence; it is difficult to watch any wild animal without 
the watcher’s presence being known or suspected. Never- 
theless, their displays are not so rare as we might imagine. 
I have more than once detected species, with which I was, 
or imagined myself to be, well acquainted, disporting them- 
selves in a manner that took me completely by surprise. 
While out tinamou shooting one day in autumn, near my 
own home in La Plata, I spied a troop of about a dozen 
weasels racing madly about over a vizcacha village—the 
mound and group of pit-like burrows inhabited by a 
community of vizcachas. These weasels were of the large 
common species, Galictis barbara, about the size of a cat; 
and were engaged in a pastime resembling a complicated 
dance, and so absorbed were they on that occasion that they 
took no notice of me when I walked up to within nine or ten 
yards of them, and stood still to watch the performance. 
They were all swiftly racing about and leaping over the pits, 
always doubling quickly back when the lmit of the mound 
was reached, and although apparently carried away with 
excitement, and crossing each others tracks at all angles, 
and this so rapidly and with so many changes of direction 
that I became confused when trying to keep any one animal 
in view, they never collided nor even came near enough to 
touch one another. The whole pertormance resembled, on a 
greatly magnified scale and without its beautiful smoothness 
and lightning swiftness, the fantastie dance of small black 
water-beetles, frequently seen on the surface of a pool or 
stream, during which the insects glide about in a limited 
area with such celerity as to appear like black curving lines 
traced by fiying invisible pens; and as the lines everywhere 
cross and intersect, they form an intricate pattern on the 
surface. After watching the weasel dance for some minutes, 
I stepped up to the mound, whereupon the animals became 
alarmed and rushed pell-mell into the burrows, but only to 
reappear in a few seconds, thrusting up their long ebony- 
