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Show 302 MR. O. V. APLIN ON T H E [Mar. 20, CRAB-EATING RACCOON (Procyon cancrivorus). Soon after I arrived in Uruguay I heard a good deal about an animal called the " Mano peluda," but no one seemed to know what it was. In December, when riding up to the Rio Negro, we heard the name again, and stopping for an hour or two at a " pulperia" a league or two south of the river, where they had several very tame " bichos" of various kinds, I was delighted to find a Mano peluda. From vague descriptions I had heard on the way tbe Mano peluda might have been a sloth, an ant-eater, or a monkey, but I found (as Mr. C. J. F. Davie, of Montevideo, had suspected) that it was a Raccoon. To the latter gentleman I am indebted for a flat skin of this species, and through his kind offices, just before I left the country, I was enabled to procure a living specimen from Florida, where they are not very rare. This example reached England safely, and was pronounced by the authorities at the Society's Gardens to be identical with the Crab-eating Raccoon. I do not think the presence of this animal in Uruguay has been previously recorded. The specimen at the " pulperia," so wonderfully tamed by Don Luis or one of bis sons, amused us by eating Huntley and Palmer's biscuits, which it held between its paws, sitting up meanwhile on its haunches. It moved rather in kangaroo fashion, but was less upright; the head is very pointed and foxy in appearance, though broader in proportion at the base and shorter. It had been captured in the neighbourhood, but was said to be rare. One or two people spoke of the desperate fights these animals engage in with dogs. The specimen I brought home lived chiefly on beef and was a great water-drinker. SKUNK (Conepatus mapurito monzoni, subsp. nov.). The Skunk wdiich I procured in Uruguay is distinct in coloration from the typical White-backed Skunk (C. mapurito) which (subject to much variation) inhabits South America generally, and is described as being from 18 to 24 inches long, with a short tail of from 9 to 10 inches, and having the back white, sometimes marked with a median black stripe, and the tail white. In Mr. Hudson's ' Naturalist in La Plata' a Skunk is figured menacing a dog (p. 123), with the back, as far as can be seen, white, and a large bushy white tail laid over the animal's back and reaching nearly to its head. The Uruguayan Skunk has the whole of the body and the tail blackish brown, varying a little in shade, wdth a narrow white line (not more than three quarters of an inch wide at its thickest part and narrowing towards each extremity) on each side of the body, starting on the top of the head (where they are joined together) and reaching sometimes to the root of the tail, but in other cases not so far. I killed a good many Skunks and saw others, but they all answered to this description. I only once saw one with any white at all on the tail. This was at the end of autumn, when we killed one |
