PEEFACE. 
The plan I have followed in this work has been 
to sift and arrange the facts I have gathered 
concerning the habits of the animals best known 
to me, preserving those only, which, in my judg- 
ment, appeared worth recording. In some in- 
stances a variety of subjects have linked themselves 
together in my mind, and have been grouped 
under one heading ; consequently the scope of the 
book is not indicated by the list of contents : this 
want is, however, made good by an index at the 
end. 
It is seldom an easy matter to give a suitable 
name to a book of this description. I am con- 
scious that the one I have made choice of displays 
a lack of originality ; also, that this kind of title 
has been used hitherto for works constructed more 
or less on the plan of the famous Naturalist on the 
Amazons. After I have made this apology the 
reader, on his part, will readily admit that, in 
treating of the Natural History of a district so 
well known, and often described as the southern 
portion of La Plata, which has a temperate climate, 
and where nature is neither exuberant nor grand, 
a personal narrative would have seemed super- 
fluous. 
The greater portion of the matter contained in 
