308 The Naturalist in La Plata. 
distinguished amidst the roar of blended voices 
coming from a distance. It sounds as if thousands 
and tens of thousands of them were striving to ex- 
press every emotion at the highest pitch of their 
voices; so that the effect is indescribable, and fills 
a stranger with astonishment. Should a gun be 
fired off several times, their cries become less each 
time; and after the third or fourth time 16 produces 
no effect. They have a peculiar, sharp, sudden, 
« far-darting ’’ alarm-note when a dog is spied, that 
is repeated by all that hear it, and produces an 
instantaneous panic, sending every vizcacha flying to 
his burrow. 
But though they manifest such a terror of dogs 
when out feeding at night (for the slowest dog can 
overtake them), in the evening, when sitting upon 
their mounds, they treat them with tantalizing 
contempt. If the dog is a novice, the imstant he 
spies the animal he rushes violently at it; the 
vizcacha waits the charge with imperturbable calm- 
ness till his enemy is within one or two yards, and 
then disappears into the burrow. After having 
been foiled in this way many times, the dog resorts 
to stratagem : he crouches down as if transformed 
for the nonce into a Felis, and steals on with won- 
derfully slow and cautious steps, his hair bristling, tail 
hanging, and eyes intent on his motionless intended 
victim; when within seven or eight yards he makes 
a sudden rush, but invariably with the same dis- 
appointing result. ‘The persistence with which the 
dogs go on hoping against hope in this unprofitable 
game, in which they always act the stupid part, is 
highly amusing, and is very interesting to the 
