CARNIVORA. 
15 S 
venture to touch it. If a single drop of this most 
powerful liquid fall on a garment, it is rendered ab- 
solutely useless ; for washing it twenty times over 
will not destroy its horrible stench, which it will 
even diffuse throughout the whole house in which it 
is kept. Azara declares, he was not able to endure 
the disgusting stink, which a dog, that had received 
it from the yagouar^ a week before, communicated 
to some furniture, although the dog bad been washed 
and scrubbed with sand above twenty times. 
This animal is comparatively slow in its motions ; 
for although it gallops occasionally, it does not then 
go faster than a man. It digs holes in the ground 
for retreat, and deposits its young in them. Its fetid 
urine, when ejected in the dark, is said to emit a 
phosphoric light. 
When they are hunted, it appears the natives 
irritate them first with a long cane, in order to make 
them void their urine, and exhaust their means of 
defence. They will also approach by surprise, and, 
seizing them by the tail, will quickly suspend them 
by it, in which situation they are incapable of emitting 
their offensive liquor; and the hunters are enabled to 
destroy the pouch in which it is secreted before they 
kill and skin them. When taken by these means, 
and deprived of their strange mode of annoyance, 
they are said to be sometimes domesticated. 
Azara observed a considerable tendency in his 
species to variety; and he found also that their skins 
became subject to change their colours, when kept 
any time, which seems to strengthen the probability, 
