TRANSPORT OF ANIMALS. 



drifted by that current and westerly winds aiford the means 

 of transport ; and I appeal to the quotations already made 

 from Forster's and Bougainville"'s works for proof that animals 

 may be so carried. 



Because we do not know that there are foxes at this time 

 upon Staten Land, it does not follow that there are none, or 

 that they have never been there ; and as guanacoes, pumas, and 

 foxes are now found on Eastern Tierra del Fuego, why might 

 not foxes have been carried to Staten Land and thence to the 

 Falklands, or, which is still more probable, drifted from Eas- 

 tern Tierra del Fuego direct. I have heard somewhere, though 

 I cannot recollect the authority, that a man in North America 

 hauled a large old tree to the bank of a river in which it was 

 floating towards the sea, and proceeded to secure it on the 

 bank, when to his astonishment, out of a hole in the tree 

 jumped a fine fox. Clusters of trees are often found floating, 

 which have fallen off a cliff*, or have been carried out of a 

 river ; and once in the ocean, they are drifted along partly by 

 currents and partly by wind acting upon their branches or 

 exposed surfaces. 



Rats and mice were probably taken to the Falklands by the 

 earlier navigators who landed there, whose ships were often 

 plagued with their numbers.* That they have varied from the 

 original stock in sharpness of nose, length of tail, colour, or 

 size, is to be expected, because we find that every animal varies 

 more or less in outward form and appearance, in consequence 

 of altered climate, food, or habits ; and that when a certain 



* In Viedma's Diary of an Expedition to Port San Julian in 1780, he 

 says, " El Bergantin San Francisco de Paula entr6 en el riachuelo para 

 descarg-arlo y dar humazo a las ratas." (The brig San Francisco de 

 Paulo M'ent into the creek to be unloaded and smoked, to kill the rats (or 

 mice, ratas signifying- either). In Magalhaens' voyage (1520) " Juan (a 

 Patagonian) seeing the Spaniards throwing mice into the sea, desired he 

 might have them for food; and those that were afterwards taken being 

 given to him, he carried them on shore." — Burney, vol. i. p. 34. Perhaps 

 some of those mice reached land alive, as the ships lay close to the 

 shore. Many other vessels, however, afterwards staid some time in Port 

 San Julian, particularly those of Drake. 



