Dec. 1833. 



GUANACO. 



197 



to a muddy salt-water creek. They then must have per- 

 ceived that they were approaching the sea^ for they had 

 wheeled with the regularity of cavalry^ and had returned back 

 in as straight a line as they had advanced. The guanacoes 

 have one singular habit^ which is to me quite inexplicable ; 

 namely, that on successive days they drop their dung in the 

 same defined heap. I saw one of these heaps which was eight 

 feet in diameter, and necessarily was composed of a large 

 quantity. Frezier remarks on this habit as common to the 

 guanaco as well as to the llama he says it is very useful 

 to the Indians, who use the dung for fuel, and are thus saved 

 the trouble of collecting it. 



The guanacoes appear to have favourite spots for dying in. 

 On the banks of the St. Cruz, the ground was actually white 

 with bones, in certain circumscribed spaces, which were 

 generally bushy and all near the river. On one such spot 

 I counted between ten and twenty heads. I particularly 

 examined the bones ; they did not appear, as some scattered 

 ones which I had seen, gnawed or broken, as if dragged 

 together by beasts of prey. The animals in most cases, 

 must have crawled, before dying, beneath and amongst the 

 bushes. Mr. Bynoe informs me that during the last voyage, 

 he observed the same circumstance on the banks of the Rio 

 Gallegos. I do not at all understand the reason of this, but 

 I may observe, that the wounded guanacoes at the St. Cruz, 

 invariably walked towards the river. At St. Jago in the 

 Cape de Verd islands I remember having seen in a retired 

 ravine a corner under a cliff, where numerous goats' 

 bones were collected : we at the time exclaimed, that it was 

 the burial-ground of all the goats in the island. I mention 

 these trifling circumstances, because in certain cases they 

 might explain the occurrence of a number of uninjured bones 

 in a cave, or buried under alluvial accumulations ; and like- 

 wise the cause, why certain mammalia are more commonly 

 embedded than others in sedimentary deposits. Any great 



* D'Orbigny says (vol. ii., p. 69) that all the species of the genus have 

 this habit. 



