March, 1834. 



WILD ANIMALS. 



249 



within certain limits ; for they have not crossed the central 

 chain of hills ; nor would they have extended even so far as 

 the base, if, as the Gauchos informed me, small colonies had 

 not been carried there. I should not have supposed that 

 these animals, natives of northern Africa, could have existed 

 in a climate so extremely humid as this, and which enjoys so 

 little sunshine that even wheat ripens only occasionally. It is 

 asserted that in Sweden, which any one would have thought a 

 more favourable climate, the rabbit cannot live out of doors. 

 The first few pair moreover had here to contend against 

 pre-existing enemies, in the fox, and some large hawks. The 

 French naturalists have considered the black variety a dis- 

 tinct species, and called it Lepus Magellanicus,^ They ima- 

 gined that Magellan, when talking of an animal under the 

 name of ^^conejos,^' in the Strait of Magellan, referred to this 

 species ; but he was alluding to a small cavy, which to this 

 day is thus called. The Gauchos laughed at the idea of 

 the black kind being different from the gray, and they said 

 that at all events it had not extended its range any further 

 than the other; that the two were never found separate; 

 and that they readily bred together, and produced piebald 

 offspring. Of the latter I now possess a specimen, and it 

 is marked about the head, differently from the French spe- 

 cific description. This circumstance shows how cautious 

 naturalists should be in making species ; for even Cuvier, 

 on looking at the skull of one of these rabbits, thought it 

 was probably distinct. 



The only quadruped native to the island, is a large wolf-like 

 fox,t which is common to both East and West Falkland. I 



* Lesson's Zoology of the Voyage of the Coquille, vol. i., p. 168. 

 All the early voyagers, and especially Bougainville, distinctly state that 

 the wolf-like fox was the only native animal on the island. The dis- 

 tinction of this rabbit as a species, is taken from peculiarities in the fur, 

 from the shape of the head, and from the shortness of the ears. I may 

 here observe that the difference between the Irish and English hare, rests 

 upon nearly similar characters, only more strongly marked. 



\ I have reason to beheve there is likewise a field-mouse. The com- 



