308 The Naturalist in La Plata. 



distinguished amidst the roar of blended voices 

 coming from a distance. It sounds as if thousands 

 and tens of thousands of them were striving to ex- 

 press every emotion at the highest pitch of their 

 voices ; so that the effect is indescribable, and fills 

 a stranger with astonishment. Should a gun be 

 fired off several times, their cries become less each 

 time ; and after the third or fourth time it produces 

 no effect. They have a peculiar, sharp, sudden, 

 " far-darting " alarm-note when a dog is spied, that 

 is repeated by all that hear it, and produces an 

 instantaneous panic, sending every vizcacha flying to 

 his burrow. 



But though they manifest such a terror of dogs 

 when out feeding at night (for the slowest dog can 

 overtake them), in the evening, when sitting upon 

 their mounds, they treat them with tantalizing 

 contempt. If the dog is a novice, the instant he 

 spies the animal he rushes violently at it ; the 

 vizcacha waits the charge with imperturbable calm- 

 ness till his enemy is within one or two yards, and 

 then disappears into the burrow. After having 

 been foiled in this way many times, the dog resorts 

 to stratagem : he crouches down as if transformed 

 for the nonce into a Felis, and steals on with won- 

 derfully slow and cautious steps, his hair bristling, tail 

 hanging, and eyes intent on his motionless intended 

 victim; when within seven or eight yards he makes 

 a sudden rush, but invariably with the same dis- 

 appointing result. The persistence with which the 

 dogs go on hoping against hope in this unprofitable 

 game, in which they always act the stupid part, is 

 highly amusing, and is very interesting to the 



