THE LLAMA, 183 
the type, have been involved by the imperfect descrip- 
tions of naturalists in almost inextricable confusion. No 
less than five have been admitted; but the variations of 
colour and of size, and the degree of length and fineness 
of the wool, differences rather commercial than natural, 
afford almost the only positive distinctions that have 
yet been laid down between them; and when we con- 
sider that some of them have been for ages in a state 
of domestication, it will readily be allowed that such 
characters as these are, to say the least, trivial and 
uncertain. Our animals, which are nearly four feet in 
height at the shoulder, and somewhat more than five 
feet to the top of the head, have the. neck, the back, the 
sides, and the tail, which is rather short, covered with a 
beautiful coat of long, bright brown, woolly hair. The 
long and pointed ears, and the small and attenuated 
head, on which the hair is short, close, and even, are of 
a grayish mouse-colour ; the outside of the legs is of the 
same colour with the sides of the body ; and their inside, 
as also the under part of the body and the throat, pure 
white. The hair on the limbs is short and smooth. In 
these respects they offer but little to distinguish them 
from any of the animals which have been exhibited in 
this country under the various names of Llamas, Pacos, 
and Guanacos. There is, however, at present in the 
Garden of the Zoological Society, an animal, which 
besides being of larger size, covered with longer and 
coarser wool, and entirely white (which latter circum- 
stance may be purely accidental), differs remarkably in 
the form of the forehead, which in it is perfectly flat, 
while in our animals it rises in a strong curve. ‘This 
character, it is probable, affords a permanent ground of 
