Hunting Notes of a Bushman. 5 
Acoories {Dasyprocta aguti) are plentiful all over the 
colony.* There are said to be two varieties of acoorie, 
of which one is black and is nocturnal in its habits ; but 
the existence of this black variety wants confirmation. 
The black kind has often been described to me ; and on 
one occasion I myself hunted something that looked like 
a black acoorie, but as I did not succeed in killing it, 
and indeed only saw it for a moment as it rushed by 
into a hole, I cannot say I have ever seen one. 
The easiest way to kill acoories is to make a 
platform of sticks, about eight or nine feet from the 
ground, and from this to shoot the acoorie when it 
comes to feed, either between 6 and 8 o'clock in the 
morning, or between 4 and 5 in the afternoon. Almost 
any dog will chase an acoorie, but few have wit and 
perseverance enough to capture it. Acoories are very 
tricky and will resort to many manoeuvres to throw 
the dog of the track ; sometimes one will run into one 
end of a fallen log, stop, carefully leave traces of 
its presence, and then run out at the other end, 
so that the dog, coming up, is arrested by the strong 
scent and stops to bite the log in which it thinks the 
acoorie still is. Dogs that know this trick try both ends 
of the log before stopping. If there is a shallow creek, 
the acoorie will jump into the water and run along 
through this as far as possible ; or, if the creek be deep, 
the acoorie will repeatedly swim across it from side to 
side ; in either case the obje6t of the manoeuvre is to 
throw the dog off the scent. In any case, an acoorie 
* It is perhaps worth noticing that the smaller, allied species ot the 
adoorie (Z>. acucky) is apparently not present in Guiana north of the 
Essequibo. — Ed, 
