BUIXS- — HORSES — FOXES. 249 



sand cattle, and four thousand horses; but there were no 

 means of ascertaining their number, except by comparing the 

 accounts of the gavicho colonists, who were accustomed to 

 pursue them, not only for ordinary food or for their hides, but 

 even for their tongues alone, not taking the trouble to carry 

 off more of the animal so wantonly slaughtered.* The wild 

 cattle are very large and very fat, and the bulls are really for- 

 midable animals, perhaps among the largest and most savage 

 of their race. At Buenos Ayres, the ordinary weight of a 

 bull's hide is less than fifty pounds, but the weight of such 

 hides in the East Falkland has exceeded eighty pounds. The 

 horses look well while galloping about wild, but the gauchos 

 say they are not of a good breed, and will not bear the fatigue 

 of an ordinary day's work, such as a horse at Buenos Ayres 

 will go through without difficulty. Perhaps their ' softness,' as 

 it is there called, may be owing to the food they get, as well 

 as to the breed. The wild pigs on East Falkland are of along- 

 legged, ugly kind ; but some of those on Saunders Island and 

 other places about West Falkland are derived from short- 

 legged Chinese pigs. The only quadruped apparently indige- 

 nous is a large fox, and as about this animal there has been 

 much discussion among naturalists, and the specimens now in the 

 British Museum were deposited there by me, I am induced to 

 make a few remarks upon it. 



* " The settlers, when they abandoned the eastern island, left behind 

 them several horses and horned cattle, which have increased so much, 

 that, on going a few miles into the country, droves of both animals may 

 be seen, I have taken several of the bullocks by shooting them. They 

 sire generally ferocious, and will attack a single person; and thus, those 

 who hunt them are enabled to get within pistol-shot of them by the fol- 

 lowing stratagem. Four or five men advance in a line upon the animal, 

 and, by appearing only as one person, it stands ready to attack, till within 

 one hundred yards, when the hunters spread themselves, and fire, endea- 

 vouring to shoot the bullock either in the head or in the fore-shoulder. 

 The horses will also attack a single person, and their mode of doing so 

 is by forming a circle round him, and prancing upon him ; but by means 

 of a musquet they may be readily dispersed." — Weddell's Voyage, pp. 

 102, 103. 



