ANIMAL KINGDOM. 
85 
birds, and carcases ; it is also a great destroyer of 
poultry, creeps into the roosts at night, and ventures 
even into towns on its depredations. The manicou is 
generally very fat, and its flesh tender, but is not prized 
as food except by the lower classes, who consider it 
rather a delicacy. 
Of rodentia w’e have squirrels, rats, mice, agoutis, 
cloromys acuti, and lapo. The three former of these need 
no description. The agouti is a small animal, more like a 
tailless rat than anything else I can liken it to. Its ears 
are very small, it is fond of housing itself at the roots 
of the balata tree, and is used for food, but has not a 
very fine flavour. It feeds upon seeds and roots. 
Lapo or lape {Caira paca). The lape is not so common 
as the agouti, and prefers the high woods. It lives upon 
seeds and fruits, burrows in the ground, and when 
hunted takes to the water, and often escapes. It is not 
unlike a deer, but its feet are paws not hoofs. It is by 
far the finest wild meat we have, and indeed to most 
persons it is prelerable to the best beef or mutton we 
can get in Trinidad. The meat when roasted or baked 
has a flavour of pork and veal combined, though more 
of the latter than the former in taste, and just like veal 
in appearance. 
Edenta. — Cachecame, armadillo, or tatou {Dasyp^ls). 
The tatou haunts the high woods, and subsists partly on 
vegetables, partly on insects ; it burrows, closes the 
entrance of its burrow and ventures out at night ; 
though not very fleet, the cachecame is not easily caught 
by dogs on account of its hard shell. It is much 
relished by some and not eaten by others. 
Great ant-eater or mataperro {Mymecophaga tridcictyla ). 
It lives in the high wood.s, sleeping the day out in the 
hollows of fallen or in the foliage of green trees, and 
crawls about at night in search of food, in obtaining 
which it insinuates its long filiform tongue into the 
nests of ants; the insects become entangled in the 
viscid saliva which covers the tongue, and are then 
