OCR Text |
Show 308 MR. O. V. APLIN ON T H E [Mar. 20, present animal " Brazil." The specimen I brought home is now in the British Museum, and has been identified by Mr. Oldfield Thomas. Scapteromys (Hesperomys) tumidus, Waterh. I procured one specimen of this Rat in the monte of the Arroyo Grande. Mr. Thomas tells m e that the British Museum previously only possessed the type of this species, an immature and much faded skin, and that the one I brought home is a very old example. Habrothrix olivaceus (Waterh.). I procured one specimen of this dark grey short-tailed Mouse. HOUSE-MOUSE (MUS musculus). There were plenty of Mice about the estancia house at Santa Elena, and they were often trapped. They seemed to m e of a warmer colour than English examples, and I brought home a skin and another example in cana, thinking they were distinct from ours; Mr. Thomas, however, tells m e they are identical. This is a good illustration of the travels of the House-Mouse. These colonists would of course manage the sea-voyage easily; but having evaded the vigilance of the custom-house (for who would pay a live-stock duty on them ?), they would have to make their way to the railway-station and proceed by train to San Jose. Thereafter a journey of about seventy miles would lay before them, to be accomplished in the course of from three or four to ten days by bullock, mule, or horse-cart. They might easily come from San Jose among bales of alfalfa hay ; but doubtless most of the journey was made in a cargo of " stores'" and inside some case containing food for man. Tuco-Tuco (Ctenomys brasiliensis). Tuco-Tuco (Ctenomys magellanicus). It is probable that there are more than these two species of Tuco-Tuco inhabiting the parts of Uruguay which I visited. About Santa Elena they lived in little colonies wherever there was a high-lying bit of ground of which the subsoil was light and sandy instead of granite rock. North of the Rio Negro, where the soil was more suitable, this animal was abundant, still living in colonies called " tuco-tuconales," over which it was necessary to ride slowly, the ground often giving way under your horse's feet. 1 have a vivid remembrance of laboriously walking over a big and very soft sandy tuco-tuconale one very hot day, terribly thirsty in consequence of being unable to obtain water at the place where w e had eaten our breakfast, to another streamlet, and finding that dry! I picked up a very few bones and remains about Santa Elena; but I never saw a live Tuco-Tuco, nor had a friend on the Rio |