CANIS MAGELLANICUS. 53 



him, stopping every now and then and staring at him, and then turned 

 and went away. It was an animal not at all feared, and with rather a 

 weak voice, and had the habit of burrowing like a fox. 



The first specimen brought to this country was obtained by Captain 

 P. P. King, during his survey of the coast of South America, at Port 

 Famine in Tierra del Fuego. It was this individual which was 

 named C. magellanicus by Dr. Gray, and is the type of the species. 

 It is preserved in the British Museum and is represented on our 

 Plate XIV. 



Mr. Darwin brought back in the ' Beagle ' another individual, which 

 he had found in the Valley of Copiapo, in the northern part of Chile. 

 It thus, as Mr. Darwin observes *, has a range of the western coast 

 of South America from the humid and entangled forests of Tierra del 

 Fuego to the almost absolutely desert country of Northern Chile a 

 distance of fully 1600 miles. He neither found it, nor did he believe 

 it was to be found, on the Atlantic side of the continent. The 

 inhabitants told him that the creature still has the curious habit of 

 approaching near to a man to stare at him, which Molina described, 

 and this in spite of so strange a habit having been the occasion of 

 great numbers being killed. Though not feared, it is very much 

 disliked by the inhabitants on account of its craft and destructiveness. 

 Two of these animals are said to have destroyed nearly two hundred 

 fowls at a farmhouse in the Copiapo valley. 



Though apparently nocturnal, it also wanders about by day, and is 

 very strong and fleet. " When riding one day," Mr. Darwin tells us, 

 " accompanied by a half-bred greyhound, I happened to come across 

 one of these " animals, " and although the ground was, in the first part 

 of the chase, level, it soon entirely distanced its pursuer. Whilst 

 running it barked so like a dog, that until it had run some way ahead 

 of the greyhound, I could not tell from which animal the noise pro- 

 ceeded. After the Colpeo had reached the mountains, it made a 

 sudden bend from its course, and returned in a nearly parallel line, 

 but at the base of a steep cliff of rocks it seated itself on its 



* Zool. of H.M.S. ' Beagle,' Mammalia, p. 11. 



