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 may be 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 different 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 

 x^urrent 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 soutpas egale- 

 ment 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 

 i\es un animal quadrupfede, et de mon embarras sur la manifere dont il a 

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

 annees en Canada, j'aurois dh savoir que des quadrup^des terrestres se 

 trouvant sur de grandes glaces au moment oh elles sont d^tachees 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 i\es 

 Malouines, etque dans ces contrees il ne s'y en peutpas former, n'y ayant 

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

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



