410 THE COLLARED PECCARY. 



reported to retain its ferocity and impatience even then. The 

 flesh is good eating, and the tusks are finely-grained ivory. 



THE COLLARED PECCARY. (Dicotyles torquatus, Cuv.) 

 Taytetou. Patira. 



Buffon, and those who have compiled from his eloquent but 

 very faulty work, have confounded the natural history of the 

 collared peccary with that of the white-lipped species (D. 

 labiatus).* Though both inhabit the thickest and most ex- 

 tensive of the South American forests, resorting for shelter to 

 the hollows of trees, and the deserted burrows of other animals, 

 yet they differ even more in habits and disposition than in 

 external form. 



The collared peccary (the smaller species) is seldom as much 

 as three feet in length, or more than fifty pounds in weight. 

 Its general colour is yellowish- grey, owing to the bristles being 

 alternately annulated with greyish straw-colour and black 5 the 

 head is very long ; the ears small, erect, greyish, and nearly 

 naked ; the snout is long, and very flexible -, there are only six 

 molar teeth in each jaw, and four incisors in the upper one. On 



* Bewick's figure of the white-lipped species is unlike it, and having set 

 out by improperly calling it a Mexican animal, he says as Buffon does, that it 

 is prolific, and resides in the mountains. The latter error has evidently arisen 

 from not knowing that what the people of Paraguay term montagnes are 

 immense forests, not mountains. 



