248 FALKLAND ISLANDS. 



ly prevail over the others, if the herds were left 

 undisturbed for the next several centuries. 



The rabbit is another animal which has been in- 

 troduced, and has succeeded very well, so that they 

 abound over large parts of the island. Yet, like 

 the horses, they are confined within certain limits; 

 for they have not crossed the central chain of hills, 

 nor would they have extended even so far as its 

 base, if, as the Gauchos informed me, small colo- 

 nies had not been carried there. I should not 

 have supposed that these animals, natives of nor- 

 thern Africa, could have existed in a climate so 

 humid as this, and which enjoys so little sunshine 

 that even wheat ripens only occasionally. It is 

 asserted that in Sweden, which any one would 

 have thought a more favourable climate, the rabbit 

 cannot live out of doors. The fii'st few pair, more- 

 over, had here to contend against pre-existing en- 

 emies, in the fox and some largo hawks. The 

 French naturalists have considered the black vari- 

 ety a distinct species, and called it Lepus Magellanic 

 cus.* They imagined that Magellan, when talking 

 of an animal under the name of " conejos" in the 

 Strait of Magellan, referred to this species ; but he 

 was alluding to a small cavy, which to this day is 

 thus called by the Spaniards. The Gauchos laugh- 

 ed at the idea of the black kind being different from 

 the grey, and they said that at all events it had not 

 extended its range any further than the grey kind; 

 that the two were never found separate; and that 

 they readily bred together, and produced piebald 



* Lesson's Zoology of the Voyage of the Coquille, torn, i., p. 

 168. All the earlier voyagers, and especially Bougainville, dis- 

 tinctly state that the wolf-like fox was the only native animal on 

 the island. The distniction of the rabbit as a species is taken 

 from peculiarities m the fur, from the shape of the head, and from 

 the shortness of the ears. I may here observe, that the difference 

 between the Irish and English hare rests upon nearly similar 

 characters, only more strongly marked. 



