The Desert Pampas. 1 1 
How marvellous a thing it seems that the two 
species of mammalians — the beaver and the vizcacha 
— -that most nearly simulate men’s intelligent actions 
in their social organizing instincts, and their habita- 
tions, which are made to endure, should belong to 
an order so low down as the Rodents 1 And in the 
case of the latter species, it adds to the marvel when 
we find that the vizcacha, according to Water- 
house, is the lowest of the order in its marsupial 
affinities. 
The vizcacha is the most common rodent on the 
pampas, and the Rodent order is represented by the 
largest number of species. The finest is the so-called 
Patagonian hare — Dolichotis patagonica — a beauti- 
ful animal twice as large as a hare, with ears shorter 
and more rounded, and legs relatively much longer. 
The fur is grey and chestnut brown. It is diurnal 
in its habits, lives in kennels, and is usually met 
with in pairs, or small flocks. It is better suited to 
a sterile country like Patagonia than to the grassy 
humid plain ; nevertheless it was found throughout 
the whole of the pampas ; but in a country where 
the wisdom of a Sir William Harcourt was never 
needed to slip the leash, this king of the Roden tia 
is now nearly extinct. 
A common rodent is the coypu — Myiopotamus 
coypii — yellowish in colour with bright red incisors i 
a rat in shape, and as large as an otter. It is 
aquatic, lives in holes in the banks, and where there 
are no banks it makes a platform nest among the 
rushes. Of an evening they are all out swimming 
and playing in the water, conversing together in 
their strange tones, which sound like the moans and 
