310 The Naturalist in La Plata. 
have found it very good, and while engaged writing 
this chapter have dined on it served up in various 
ways. The young animals are rather insipid, the 
old males tough, but the mature females are excel- 
lent—the flesh being tender, exceedingly white, 
fragrant to the nostrils, and with a very delicate 
game-flavour. 
Within the last ten years so muck new land has 
been brought under cultivation that farmers have 
been compelled to destroy incredible numbers of 
vizcachas: many large ‘“‘estancieros”’ (cattle- 
breeders) have followed the example set by the 
erain-growers, and have had them exterminated 
on their estates. Now all that Azara, on hearsay, 
tells about the vizcachas perishing in their burrows, 
when these are covered up, but that they can sup- 
port life thus buried for a period of ten or twelve 
days, and that during that time animals will 
come from other villages and disinter them, unless 
frightened off with dogs, is strictly true. Country 
workmen are so well acquainted with these facts 
that they frequently undertake to destroy all the 
vizcacheras on an estate for so paltry a sum as ten- 
pence in English money for each one, and yet will 
make double the money at this work than they can 
at any other. By day they partly open up, then 
cover up the burrows with a great quantity of 
earth, and by night go round with dogs to drive 
away the vizcachas from the still open burrows 
that come to dig out their buried friends. After all 
the vizcacheras ou an estate have been thus served, 
the workmen are usually bound by previous agree- 
vd 
ment to keep guard over them for a space of eight 
