THE LLAMA. 



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'I'll'.' Vicugna. 



The Vicugna is a variety of the Llamas of South America. The form of the Vicugna is elegant, The 

 legs are slender, the neck erect, and head small ; the ears long and flexible, and the eves full and brilliant. 

 When South America was first visited by the Spaniards, the Llama and several other animals were incor- 

 rectly described in general terms as belonging to the same species. Linnaeus divided them into two species, 

 at the head of which he placed the Llama, useful as a beast of burden, and the Vicugna equally valuable 

 for its flesh and wool. Other naturalists have adopted different classifications of the groups resembling the 

 Llama; but the late Baron Cuvier definitively placed the Llama and Vicugna in the rank of a distind 

 species, aud regarded the others simply as varieties having affinities to them. 



Captain Shelvocke, who visited Peru rather more than a century ago, gave the following description of 

 the Vicugna : " The Vicugna is shaped much like the common Llama, but much smaller and lighter, theii 

 ivool being extraordinarily fine and much valued. These animals are often hunted after the following 

 manner: — Many Indians gather together and drive them into some narrow pass, across which they have 

 previously extended cords about four feet from the ground, having bits of wool or cloth hanging to them 

 at small distances. This so frightens them that they dare not pass, and they gather together in a string, 

 when the Indians kill them with stones tied to the ends of leather thongs." 



In Kerr's " Collection of A^oyages," it is stated that in Chili and Peru about eighty thousand of these 

 animals are killed every year for the sake of their wool, and that their numbers are still kept up. Dr. 

 Ure states in his work on the "Cotton Manufacture," that among the mummy-cloths brought from the 

 ancient tombs of Arica, in Peru, by Lord Colchester, there are specimens of a sort of worsted stuff, made 

 of the wool of the Vicugna; so that at a period long preceding the commencement of manufactures, or the 

 dawn of civilization in England, the art of manufacturing cloth had been accpiired in those early ages bv 

 the inhabitants of this portion of the New World. 

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