ANIMALS OF THE NEW WORLD. 67 



trive mischief, and ample means to circumvent his 

 prey, he may be seen prowling through the woods, 

 and across the plains of those vast regions. But 

 his favourite haunts are in the forests of the Andes, 

 amid those lofty mountains, which seem to rest on 

 others, and rise to a surprising height, shrouded 

 with snow that never melts. He is seen too, around 

 the hase of the terrific Cotopaxi, and even in those 

 wild deserts that bound the confines of the veget- 

 able world, beneath the empire of perpetual winter. 

 There grows a kind of rush, resembling the Genista 

 Hispanca, among which he delights to harbour. 

 Trees also, of commanding height, afford him a secure 

 retreat ; the quinual, well adapted to resist the se- 

 verest cold; the quineia, of which the smallest 

 branch, when kindled, yields a light equal to that 

 of a torch; the achupalla; and a vegetable called 

 puchugchu, resembling a loaf, and of so firm a tex- 

 ture, that the stamp of a heavy foot, or the tread of 

 a mule, makes no impression on them, till fully 

 ripe. These are the vegetable aborigines of the soil, 

 where either from the intense cold, or the perpetual 

 snow, or from the sterility of the earth, nothing else 

 is known to vegetate; except, indeed, the calaquala, 

 a climbing plant, which spreads itself in thin stems 

 along the sand, or runs up the rock by means of ten- 

 drils. Here, then, is the favourite rebsort of innu- 

 merable foxes, crafty creatures, which seem to exult 

 in the fastnesses by which they are surrounded. 

 But how they contrive to subsist, throughout the 

 long and severe winters, is altogether inexplicable. 

 The rocks are then covered with snow, the deep 

 primeval forests afford no means of living, the 



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