252 CHANGES IN ANIMALS. 



bits, rats and mice, eggs, seals, &c., and to their habits of 

 attacking king-penguins, if not seal, while alive, I presume that 

 a part of their unhesitating approach to man maybe traced. 



Naturalists say that these foxes are peculiar to this archipe- 

 lago, and they find difficulty in accounting for their presence 

 in that quarter only.* That they are now peculiar cannot be 

 doubted ; but how long they have been so is a very different 

 question. As I know that three hairy sheep, brought to Eng- 

 land from Sierra Leone in Africa, became woolly in a few 

 years, and that woolly sheep soon become hairy in a hot coun- 

 try (besides that their outward form alters considerably after 

 a few generations) ; and as I have both seen and heard of wild 

 cats, known to have been born in a domestic state, whose size 

 surpassed that of their parents so much as to be remarkable ; 

 whose coats had become long and rough ; and whose phy- 

 siognomies were quite difterent from those of their race who 

 were still domestic ; I can see nothing extraordinary in foxes 

 carried from Tierra del Fuego to Falkland Island becoming: 

 longer-legged, more bulky, and differently coated. But how 

 were they carried there ? In this manner : — In page 242, the 

 current was mentioned which always sets from Staten Land 

 towards the southern shores of the Falklands — icebergs or trees 



• Forster, as an exception, saw no difficulty in accounting for their 

 involuntary migration. " M. Forster, Anglais, de la Societe Royale, qui 

 a fait a cet ouvrage I'honneur de le traduire, a accompagne sa traduction 

 de plusieurs notes." — " Je dois dire que toutes ses notes ne sontpas egale- 

 nient justes ; par exemple, dans le chapftre de I'Histoire Naturelle des 

 lies Malouines, il est surpris de ce que je le suis d'avoir trouve sur ces 

 Jles un animal quadrup^de, et de mon embarras sur la manifere dont il a 

 ete transporte. II ajoute qu'ayant pass6 comme je I'ai fait plusieurs 

 annees en Canada, j'aurois dft savoir que des quadrupfedes terrestres se 

 trouvant sur de grandes glaces au moment oh. elles sont d6tachees des 

 terres, sont emportees a la haute mer, et abordent a des c6tes fort eloi- 

 gnees de leur pays natal, sur lesquelles ces masses de glace viennent 

 echouer. Je sais ce fait ; mais M. Forster ne sait pas que jamais les 

 voyageurs n'ont rencontre de glaces flottantes dans les environs des fles 

 Malouines, etque dans ces contrees il ne s'y en peut pas former, n'yayant 

 ni grand fleuve ni meme aucune riviere un peu considerable.— Voyage 

 jie Bougainville, seconde edition, torn. i. pp. xiv. et xv. (note). 



