1894.] MAMMALS OP URUGUAY. 313 



imagine these strong beasts being drowned, as they do not go to 

 ground, but live in cover on the surface. 



When shot and dying in deep water they sink at once, but will 

 float in an hour or two. 



In concluding these notes on the Carpincho I can only echo 

 Seiior Bollo's regret : — " Desgraciadaruente este animal tan util 

 tiende a desaparecer de las tierras pobladas, porque continuamente 

 se le persigue.'"' 



Coypu (Myopotamus coypu). 



The Coypu or Nutria, to use the name by which it is always 

 known in Uruguay, was not uncommon in some of the larger 

 canadas or watercourses. Here it inhabits the larger permanent 

 lagunas. I have heard it stated that if a laguna is inhabited by 

 Nutrias it is a sign that it never dries up in a drought. But during 

 the seca which prevailed during the time I was in the country, 

 and may well be distinguished as the seca grande, some places 

 inhabited by Nutrias did dry up, but it was probably many years 

 since they had done so previously. In the steep banks of the 

 lagunas the Nutrias make drives, the mouths of the tunnels being 

 half in and half out of the water when it is at its normal height. 

 The Nutria is not a very shy animal. Some of them inhabited a 

 little caiiada by the side of which the sheep-dipping baiiadero at 

 Santa Elena was situated, and adjoining the little potrero where 

 the pigs were kept and all the sheep killed ; they were probably 

 attracted by the head of water kept up by a small dam. The 

 Nutria swims with hardly a ripple and disappears noiselessly in the 

 drive at the water-line. The body is dull brown, muzzle greyish, 

 and there is a little warm brown on the side of the head. It 

 swims with the nose, the top of the head, and a narrow line of the 

 back out of water, all on a dead level, or almost so ; the nostrils 

 being very high up in the line of the skull, they are kept out of the 

 water without the nose being poked up towards the sky. A half- 

 grown one brought to me alive ate green maize readily, but died in 

 my absence. An old male, when captured, made most extraordinary 

 wailing cries of complaint. 



[The Viscacha (Lagostomus tricliodactylus), so common in the 

 Argentine Bepublic, is not found in Uruguay, the great river of 

 that name having apparently proved a bar to its extending its range 

 into the Banda Oriental.] 



Pampas Deer (Cariacus campestris). 



In the neighbourhood of Santa Elena this species — the Grama, as 

 it is called — has been exterminated, with the exception of a small 

 herd, preserved in a distant part of the camp belonging to that 

 estancia, in the rincon of the Arroyos de Monzon and Grande. 

 The herd in 1892-93 consisted, so far as was known, of about a 

 dozen does and seven bucks. On that part of the Bio Negro which 

 I visited it is also rare, but in some parts of Elorida it is still 

 numerous. One day at the end of January I rode up pretty close 



