56 WEIGHTS OF SOUTH AMERICAN GAME. 



peccari and capybara 300 Ibs. The monkeys complete the 

 number. The ratio will therefore be about 24 to I for the 

 ten largest animals of the two continents.* 



The foregoing details may be accepted as pretty con- 

 clusive evidence of the fallacy of the popular idea that 

 a rich country is most productive in the amount of its 

 animal resources. But when we come to deal with the 

 Wilderness and its Tenants, we find we have to change 

 a great many of our previously conceived ideas on 

 these subjects. 



The extent of country is usually so vast, and the 

 habits of game so migratory and so little understood, 

 that it is very hard to form any reliable opinion as 

 to the amount of resident animal life which a country 

 is capable of supporting, because in the dry season, 

 when the tremendous power of the sun, combined with 

 hot winds, scorches up everything like the blast from 

 a furnace, vast districts may appear to be mere desert 

 wastes but by a wise and beneficent provision of 

 Nature, the surface then becomes converted into a 

 species of sun-dried brick, which affords complete pro- 

 tection to the various roots and bulbs of the desert 

 plants beneath. These are mostly all possessed of 

 immense, though dormant vitality, so that on the first 

 approach of the rains they are ready at once to spring 

 into growth. 



All these countries, however destitute of animal 

 and vegetable life they may at times appear to be, 

 have each of them their season of fertility, however 

 short, and the rapidity with which dry plains, in tro- 



*A Naturalist's Voyage round the World in H. M.S. u Beagle S 

 during the years 1832 to 1836, by Charles Darwin, I4th Edit., 1879, 

 p. 87. 



