184 FALKLAND ISLANDS. [CUAK ix. 



Of the latter I now possess a specimen, and it is marked about the 

 head differently from the French specific description. This cir- 

 cumstance shows how cautious naturalists should be in making 

 species ; for even Cuvier, on looking at the skull of one of these 

 rabbits, thought it was probably distinct ! 



The only quadruped native to the island * is a large wolf-like fox 

 (Canis antarcticus), which is common to both East and West Falk- 

 land. I have no doubt it is a peculiar species, and confined to this 

 archipelago; because many sealers, Gauchos, and Indians, who 

 have visited these islands, all maintain that no such animal is 

 found in any part of South America. Molina, from a similarity in 

 habits, thought that this was the same with his "culpeu;"f but 

 I have seen both, and they ara quite distinct. These wolves are 

 well known, from Byron's account of their tameness and curiosity, 

 which the sailors, who ran into the water to avoid them, mistook 

 for fierceness. To this day their manners remain the same. They 

 have been observed to enter a tent, and actually pull some meat 

 from beneath the head of a sleeping seaman. The Gauchos also 

 have frequently in the evening killed them, by holding out a piece 

 of meat in one hand, and in the other a knife ready to stick them. 

 As far as I am aware, there is no other instance in any part of the 

 world, of so small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, 

 possessing so large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to itself. 

 Their numbers have rapidly decreased; they are already banished 

 from that half of the island which lies to the eastward of the neck 

 of land between St. Salvador Bay and Berkeley Sound. Within 

 a very few years after these islands shall have become regularly 

 settled, in all probability this fox will be classed with the dodo, as 

 an animal which has perished from the face of the earth. 



At night (17th) we slept on the neck of land at the head of 

 Choiseul Sound, which forms the south-west peninsula. The 

 valley was pretty well sheltered from the cold wind; but there 

 was very little brushwood for fuel. The Gauchos, however, soon 

 found what, to my great surprise, made nearly as hot a fire as 

 coals ; this was the skeleton of a bullock lately killed, from which 



* I have reason, however, to suspect that there is a field-mouse. The 

 common European rat and mouse have roamed far from the habitations of 

 the settlors. The common hog lias also run wild on one islet : all are of a 

 black colour : the hoars are very fierce, and have great tusks. 



t The "culpeu" is the Canis Magellanicus brought home hv Captain 

 King from the Strait of Magellan. It is common in Chile 



