VISCACHA. 269 



one entrance often serves for two or more distinct holes. 

 Often, when the ground is soft, there are twenty or 

 thirty or- more burrows in an old vizcachera, but on 

 stony, or ' tosca,' even an old one may have no more than 

 four or five burrows. They are deep, wide-mouthed holes, 

 placed very close together, the entire village covering an 

 area of from 100 to 200 square feet of ground." 



(P. 828) : " It is probably a long-lived, and certainly 

 it is a very hardy animal. Where it has any green 

 substance to eat, it never drinks water ; but after a long 

 summer drought, where for months they have subsisted 

 on bits of dried thistle-stalks, and old withered grass, if 

 a shower falls they will come forth from their burrows 

 even at noonday and drink eagerly from the pools. 



"It has been erroneously stated that they subsist on 

 roots. Their food is grass and seeds; but they may 

 sometimes eat roots, as the ground is occasionally seen 

 washed up about the burrows. In March, when the 

 stalks of the perennial cardoon or castle-thistle {Ecliinops 

 vitro) are dry, the Vizcachas fell them by gnawing 

 about their roots, and afterwards tear to pieces the great 

 dr}- flower-heads to get the seeds iml^edded deeply in 

 them, of which they seem very fond. Large patches of 

 thistle are often found served thus, the ground about 

 them literally white with the silvery bristles they have 

 scattered. 



"The strongest instinct of this animal is to clear the 

 ground thoroughly about its burrows ; and it is this 

 destructive habit that makes it necessary for cultivators 

 of the soil to destroy all the Vizcachas in or near their 

 fields. 



(P. 829) : " The Vizcachas are cleanly in their habits ; 

 and the fur, though it has a strong earthy smell, is kept 

 exceedingly neat," 



