THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
There remain to be mentioned within this suborder only 
an extensive family (Octodontide) of ‘“‘rats,” many of large 
size, and nearly all burrowers or swimmers or both, agreeing 
in several peculiarities of structure, one of which is that spines 
or bristles are min- 
gled with the fur or 
else form a comblike 
appendage on the 
hind feet. The group 
belongs mainly to 
tropical America, but 
a few are African, 
prominently the big 
‘““cane rat,’ so de- 
structive to sugar 
plantations, yet of 
much importance as 
a food resource of 
the negro field-hands. 
Several of the American forms make some special claim 
upon our interest, as, for instance, the quaint hutias of Cuba 
and Jamaica, which are known nowhere else; the noisy Argen- 
tine tuco-tuco, —a curious little creature with the habits of a 
mole and nearly as blind, eyes being of no service to it under- 
ground; and that big water rat called in Chile coypu, on 
the Argentine pampas quuiya, and in the fur 
trade nutria (Spanish for ‘‘otter’’), because it 
furnishes a fur which became a substitute for beaver; and 
like that animal it was nearly exterminated before the fashion 
for wearing felted fur hats was changed (about 1825) to 
that for the silk “tile” of the present mode, giving both 
animals a respite. The coypu looks and behaves much like 
a muskrat, but has a round tail, and swims by means of 
webbed hind feet. 
THE CoyPu. 
Coypu. 
422 
