THE AGOUTIS. 



141 



when worn presenting winding folds of enamel on the 

 fiat crowns. It is impossible to convey by mere de- 

 scription an idea of the figures Mhich these convolutions 

 assume, and which vary in ^proportion to the wearing 

 down of the tooth : we therefore refer to Fig. 90, where 

 a and h represent respectively the upper and lower jaws. 

 No. 1 represents the teeth when much worn down ; 2, 

 the same in an intermediate state ; 3, the same when the 

 tubercles are just effaced, and the surface smoothed down 

 to a level. 



The flesh of the agoutis is in some districts highly es- 

 teemed, being white and tender. 



The agoutis use the fore-paws as hands to convey their 

 food to the mouth, and usually sit upright on their 

 haunches to eat : they frequently also assume the same 

 })Osition in order to look around them, or when they are 

 surprised by any unusual sound or occurrence. Their 

 food is exclusively of a vegetable nature, and consists 

 most commonly of wild yams, potatoes, and other tube- 

 rous roots; in the islands of the different West India 

 groups ihey are particularly destructive to the sugar- 

 cane, of the roots of which tliey are extremely fond. 

 The planters employ every artifice for destroying them, 

 so that at present they have become comparatively rare 

 in the sugar islands, though on the first settlement of the 

 Antilles and Bahamas they are said to have swarmed in 

 such countless multitudes as to have constituted the prin- 

 cipal ariicle of food for the Indians. They were the 

 largest quadrupeds indigenous in these islands upon their 

 first discovery. The same rule of geograi)hical distribu- 

 tion holds good generally in other cases, viz. that, where 

 groups of islands are detached at some distance from the 

 mainland of a particular continent, the smaller species of 

 animals are usually found spread over both, whilst the 

 larger and more bulky are confined to the mainland alone, 

 and are never found to be indigenous in the small insu- 

 lated lands. 



Though the agoutis use the fore-paws as described, 

 yet they are incapable of climbing trees ; and though 

 the nails are strong, they do not burrow, but conceal 



