246 TUCO-TUCO 



This wee beast takes as much pleasure in exercising 

 his voice in a set performance as any feathered 

 songster, although it is a voice without any musical 

 quality. It is percussive, and is like blows of a 

 heavy mallet on a log of hard wood, blow following 

 blow, at first slowly, then faster and faster, and 

 lighter, until at the end the strokes almost run 

 into each other. 



What fantastic tricks Nature plays with her 

 creatures! It is odd enough that a rodent with big 

 eyes, a vegetable feeder, should have been thrust 

 underground like an earthworm-eating mole, but 

 funnier still that it should be made a songster that 

 amuses itself in its narrow dark subterranean habita- 

 tions with those gnome-like hammerings. 



If in your wanderings you come to a sandy waste, 

 the soil in which the animal loves to dwell, you will 

 soon discover that he takes great delight in his own 

 performances. At intervals by day and night its 

 sound is heard — took-took-took, blow following blow; 

 and as soon as the series of sounds, its song, is fin- 

 ished, another takes it up, and soon aU about you, 

 far and wide, under your feet, the earth resounds 

 with the strange hammer-song. 



Here in England, we have a "singing mouse," 

 as it is called, but although Darwin took him seriously, 

 he is a fraud, as the sounds he emits are involuntary, 

 and are supposed to be caused by a malformation of 

 the breathing apparatus. A log of wood on the fire, 

 and sometimes a poor human sufferer from bronchitis, 

 will produce a music in the same way. The singing- 



