168 HUNTING ADVENTURES. 



init} of water, wooded, marshy places, and borders of rivers are 

 their favorite localities ; they inhabit burrows, which they excavate, 

 but so superficially, that they are apt to give way beneath the foot 

 of a person passing over them, no less to his annoyance than that 

 of the animal which thus finds itself in open daylight. These 

 burrows have, it has been asserted, three openings, which the 

 animal conceals with dry leaves and branches. In order to capture 

 the Paca alive, the hunter stops two of these apertures, and pro 

 ceeds to work at the third, till he arrives at the chamber to which 

 the apertures lead. Driven to extremity, the Paca makes a severe 

 resistance, often inflicting severe wounds. 



When not distutbed, the Paca often sits up and washes its head 

 and whiskers with its two fore paws, which it licks and moistens 

 with its saliva at each ablution, like a cat ; and with its fore-paws, 

 as well as with the hind ones, it often scratches itself and dresses 

 its fur. Though heavy and corpulent, it can run with a good deal 

 of activity, and often takes lively jumps. It swims and dives with 

 great adroitness, and its cry resembles the grunt of a young pig. 

 Its food consists of fruits and tender plants, which it seeks in the 

 night, hardly ever quitting its burrow in the day, the strong light 

 of which, as is the case with other nocturnal animals, is oppressive 

 to its eye. The planter often rues the visits made by these mid- 

 night foragers to his sugar-canes. The female is said to bring 

 forth in the rainy season, and to produce but a single young one, 

 which stays a long time with its mother. The Pacas are very 

 clean animals in all their habits, and keep their subterranean 

 dwelling in a state of the utmost purity. 



The Agouti 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 position in order to look around 

 them, or when they are surprised by any unusual sound or occur- 

 rence. Their food is exclusively of a vegetable nature, and consists 

 most commonly of wild yams, potatoes, and other tuberous roots ; 

 in the islands of the different West India groups, they are particu- 

 larly destructive to the sugar-cane of the roots of which they are 

 xtremely fond. The planters employ every artifice for destroying 



