18/2.] HABITS OF THE VIZCACHA. 831 



close at haud may be 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 express 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 im- 

 perturbable calmness till his enemy is within one or two yards, and 

 then disappears into the burrow. After having been foiled 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 7 or 8 

 yards he makes a sudden rush, but invariably with the same 

 disappointing 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 

 naturalist ; for it shows that the native dogs on the Pampas have 

 developed a very remarkable instinct, and one that might be perfected 

 by artificial selection ; but dogs with the hunting habits of the cat 

 would, I think, be of little use to man. When it is required to train 

 dogs to hunt the nocturnal Armadillo (Dasypus villosus), then this 

 deep-rooted (and, it might be added, hereditary) passion for Viz- 

 cachas is excessively annoying, and it is often necessary to administer 

 hundreds of blows and rebukes before a dog is induced to track an 

 armadillo without leaving the scent every few moments to make futile 

 grabs at his old enemies. 



The following instance will show how little suspicion of man the 

 Vizcachas have. A few years ago I went out shooting them on 

 three consecutive evenings. I worked in a circle, constantly revisiting 

 the same burrows, never going a greater distance from home than 

 could be walked in four or five minutes. During the three evenings 

 I shot sixty Vizcachas dead ; and probably as many more escaped 

 badly wounded into their burrows ; for they are hard to kill, and 

 however badly wounded, if sitting near the burrow when struck, are 

 almost certain to escape into it. But on the third evening I found 

 them no wilder, and killed about as many as on the first. After 

 this I gave up shooting them in disgust ; it was dull sport, and to 

 exterminate or frighten them away with a gun seemed an impossi- 

 bility. 



It is a very unusual thing to eat the Vizcacha, most people, and 

 especially the gauehos, having a silly unaccountable prejudice against 



