1 6 The Naturalist in La Plata. 



hunts in companies ; and when these long-bodied 

 creatures sit up erect, glaring with beady eyes, 

 grinning and chattering at the passer-by, they look 

 like little friars in black robes and grey cowls ; but 

 the expression on their round faces is malignant 

 and bloodthirsty beyond anything in nature, and 

 it would perhaps be more decent to liken them to 

 devils rather than to humans. 



On the pampas there is, strictly speaking, only 

 one ruminant, the Cervus campestris, which is 

 common. The most curious thing about this animal 

 is that the male emits a rank, musky odour, so 

 powerful that when the wind blows from it the 

 effluvium comes in nauseating gusts to the nostrils 

 from a distance exceeding two miles. It is really 

 astonishing that only one small ruminant should be 

 found on this immense grassy area, so admirably 

 suited to herbivorous quadrupeds, a portion of which 

 at the present moment affords sufficient pasture to 

 eighty millions of sheep, cattle, and horses. In La 

 Plata the author of The Mammoth and the Flood will 

 find few to quarrel with his doctrine. 



Of Edentates there are four. The giant armadillo 

 does not range so far, and the delicate little pink 

 fairy armadillo, the truncated Chlamydophorus, is 

 a dweller in the sand-dunes of Mendoza, and has 

 never colonized the grassy pampas. The Tatusia 

 hybrida, called " little mule " from the length of its 

 ears, and the Dasypus tricinctus, which, when dis- 

 turbed, rolls itself into a ball, the wedge-shaped head 

 and wedge-shaped tail admirably fitting into the 

 deep-cut shell side by side ; and the quirquincho 

 (Dasypus minutus), all inhabit the pampa, are 



