OCR Text |
Show 1894.] MAMMALS OP URUGUAY. 313 imagine these strong beasts being drowned, as they do not go to ground, but live in cover on the surface. W h e n shot and dying in deep water they sink at once, but will float in an hour or two. In concluding these notes on the Carpincho I can only echo Senor Bollo's regret:-" Desgraciadamente este animal tan util tiende a desaparecer de las tierras pobladas, porque continuamente se le persigue." COYPU (Myopotamus coypu). The Coypu or Nutria, to use the name by which it is always known in Uruguay, was not uncommon in some of the larger caiiadas or watercourses. Here it inhabits the larger permanent lagunas. I have heard it stated that if a laguna is inhabited by Nutrias it is a sign that it never dries up in a drought. But during the seca which prevailed during the time I was in the country, and may well be distinguished as the seca grande, some places inhabited by Nutrias did dry up, but it was probably many years since they had done so previously. In the steep banks of the lagunas the Nutrias make drives, the mouths of the tunnels being half in and half out of the water when it is at its normal height. The Nutria is not a very shy animal. Some of them inhabited a little Canada by the side of which the sheep-dipping baiiadero at Santa Elena was situated, and adjoining the little potrero where the pigs were kept and aU the sheep killed; they were probably attracted by the head of water kept up by a small dam. The Nutria swims with hardly a ripple and disappears noiselessly in the drive at the water-line. The body is dull brown, muzzle greyish, and there is a little warm brown on the side of the head. It swims with the nose, the top of the head, and a narrow line of the back out of water, all on a dead level, or almost so ; the nostrils being very high up in the line of the skull, they are kept out of the w-ater without the nose being poked up towards the sky. A half-grown one brought to m e alive ate green maize readily, but died in m y absence. A u old male, when captured, made most extraordinary wailing cries of complaint. [The Viscacha (Lagostomus trichodactylus), so common in the Argentine Republic, is not found in Uruguay, the great river of that name having apparently proved a bar to its extending its range into the Banda Oriental.] PAMPAS DEER (Cariacus campestris). In the neighbourhood of Santa Elena this species-theGama, as it is called-has been exterminated, with the exception of a small herd preserved in a distant part of the camp belonging to that estancia, in the rincon of the Arroyos de Monzon and Grande. The herd in 1892-93 consisted, so far as was known, of about a dozen does and seven bucks. On that part of the Rio Negro which I visited it is also rare, but in some parts of Florida it is stdl numerous. One day at the end of January I rode up pretty close |