Appendix. 385 



easily, wliicli birds have, and being more persecuted by man, 

 they do not often disport themselves unrestrainedly in his 

 presence ; it is difficult to watch any wild animal without 

 the watcher's presence being known or suspected. Never- 

 theless, their displays are not so rare as we might imagine. 

 I have more than once detected species, with which I was, 

 or imagined myself to be, well acquainted, disporting them- 

 selves in a manner that took me completely by surprise. 

 While out tinamou shooting one day in autumn, near my 

 own home in La Plata, 1 spied a troop of about a dozen 

 weasels racing madly about over a vizcacha village — the 

 mound and group of pit-like burrows inhabited by a 

 community of vizcachas. These weasels were of the large 

 common species, Galictis barbara, about the ■'size of a cat; 

 and were engaged in a pastime resembling a complicated 

 dance, and so absorbed were they on that occasion that they 

 took no notice of me when I walked up to within nine or ten 

 yards of them, and stood still to watch the performance. 

 They were all swiftly racing about and leaping over tlie pits, 

 always doubling quickly back when the limit of the mound 

 was reached, and although apparently carried away with 

 excitement, and crossing each other's tracks at all angles, 

 and this so rapidly and with so many changes of direction 

 that I became confused when trying to keep any one animal 

 in view, they never collided nor even came near enough to 

 touch one another. The whole performance resembled, on a 

 greatly magnified scale and without its beautiful smoothness 

 and lightning swiftness, the fantastic dance of small black 

 water-beetles, frequently seen on the surface of a pool or 

 stream, during which the insects glide about in a limited 

 area with such celerity as to appear like black curving lines 

 traced by flying invisible pens ; and as the lines everywhere 

 cross and intersect, they form an intricate pattern on the 

 surface. After watching the weasel dance for some minutes, 

 I stepped up to the mound, whereupon the animals became 

 alarmed and rushed pell-mell into the burrows, but only to 

 reappear in a few seconds, thrusting up their long ebony- 



c 



