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Show 1894.] MAMMALS OF URUGUAY. 315 the only natural wood (composed of low thorny trees and big willows), and the Comadreja preferring to live on the higher camp, where it lies up in clefts and holes among the granite boulder rocks ; among these a few low thorny bushes are found in some cases. I have never seen a Comadreja in the monte or up any native tree, but have no doubt they often climbed the trees at the estancias, which Mr. Davie tells m e they are well able to do. Tet this animal has a very prehensile tail, naked and scaly. Having hauled one out of a cleft by the tail, I found that it twined the latter tightly round m y fingers, the muscular power being considerable. They run up the boulder rocks with great agility. At bay, whether in rocky holt or old ants'-nest, laid up in a soft bed of dead grass, or " drawn " and facing a dog with arched back and grinning teeth, they make a snarling, grunting growl and a hiss. It is necessary to kill those taking up their quarters near houses, but they are often very difficult to kill. I have hammered one with a stick and thrown its heavy body against a rock time after time, and then, after carrying it by the tail for some distance, discovered that it was still alive. Much of the difficulty arises from their habit of shamming. Once I smoked out a female and two one-third grown young ones. A young one came first and was apparently laid out with a blow from m y stick; I had to run round the rock after the next, and when I came back (in less than half a minute) the first had come to life again and departed! A n old buck, worried by a dog and finished off with a shot in the head from a collecting-gun and left for dead, was found an hour or so after partly recovered. A female was brought iu on 30th October with ten young, naked, pink, and blind; head and body 2 inches, tail 1^ inch long. Inside the mother's pouch were 9 teats only, which calls to one's mind the complaint of the eleventh little pig! THICK-TAILED OPOSSUM (Didelphys crassicaudata). The Comadreja colorada, as this species is called, is rare in the part of Soriano where I was living, only one having been killed there during m y stay so far as I know. It is said by the residents to be excessively savage ("muybrava") for so small an animal. Responding to a suggestion of M r . Davie, I inquired whether the female had a pouch capable of carrying her young, and one rather sharp and observant puestero's boy declared that it had. Although the adults are so savage, a lady of m y acquaintance had a young one, taken from the body of its dead mother in the camp south of the Rio Negro in February, which was perfectly tame. It unfortunately shared the fate of so many ladies' pets and was slain by a large tom-cat belonging to a house at which she was staying on her way to the coast, a day or two before I went over there. The fur of this animal is very beautiful. It is of a warm, light chestnut, paler and yellower on the sides and lower parts. The upper parts have a flush on them of what can only be described as crimson. |