CANIS ANTAKCTICUS. 27 



they happened to have no fire-arms with theiu, they had immediately 

 put the boat off in deep water." 



In his account of the Voyage of the ' Beagle,'* Mr. Darwin 

 observes : — " To this day their manners remain the same. They have 

 been observed to enter a tent, and actually pull some meat from beneath 

 the head of a sleeping seaman. The Gauchos, also, have frequently 

 killed them in the evening by holding out a piece of meat in one hand, 

 and in the other a knife ready to stick them." 



The species was found in both the East and West Falkland Islands, 

 but at the time of the visit of the ' Beagle ' their numbers had already 

 so decreased that they had altogether disappeared from the neck of land 

 between San Salvador Bay and Berkeley Sound in the Eastern Island. 



They largely feed on native geese, which, to escape them, have taken 

 to build on outlying islets. j\Ir. Darwin also tells us that they do not 

 go in packs, and arc not nocturnal, though they wander about more in 

 the evening than in broad day. Except during the breeding-season, 

 they arc generally silent. 



They burrow in the ground like a fox, and Byron noticed pieces of 

 seals they had mangled, and skins of penguins, scattered about the 

 mouths of their holes. " To get rid of these creatures," he tells us, 

 " our people set fire to the grass, so that the country was in a blaze as 

 far as the eye could reach for several days, and we could see them 

 running in great numbers to seek other quarters." Our figure, 

 Plate VIII., is drawn from a specimen brought from East Falkland 

 Island by Sir W. Barnet. 



The fur of this animal is moderately long, with no very abundant 

 underfur, which is of a pale brown colour. The hairs are yellow, 

 commoidy black at the apex, annulated with white on the upper parts 

 of the body ; those of the hinder part of the belly of a nearly uniform 

 dirty white, and those of the chest yellowish, with black tips and greyish 

 at the base. 



The hairs of the lips, chin, and throat are white, and also the inner 

 margins of the ears. The insides of the thighs are whitish. The limbs 

 are fidvous externally, the feet somewhat paler. There may be a 



* First edition, vol. iii. p. 250. 



e2 



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