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THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA
First Edition, Feb. 1892.
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
”
”
”
”
2”?
June 1892.
Jan. 1895.
June 1903.
Aug. 1912.
March 1922.
RHEA, OR S. AMERICAN OSTRICH.
Frontispiece.
THE NATURALIST
IN LA PLATA
BY
W. H. HUDSON, F.Z.S.
JOINT AUTHOR OF “ARGENTINE ORNITHOLOGY ”’
ILLUSTRATED BY J. SMIT
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & CoO.
All vights reserved
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
Tuis work was first published in February 1892,
reprinted in June of the same year, and a third
edition, with an appendix, printed in January 1895.
It has now been for some time out of print, and as
a demand for it still exists, the author and his present
publisher have been encouraged to issue this new and
cheaper edition. The letter-press and the drawings
in the text have been left as they were; the only
change is in the form of the book and the sub-
stitution of new plates for the old ones.
The following paragraphs appeared in the Preface
to former editions :—
“The plan I have followed in this work has been
to sift and arrange the facts I have gathered con-
cerning the habits of the animals best known to
me, preserving those only, which, in my judgment,
appeared to be worth recording. In some instances
a variety of subjects have linked themselves together
in my mind, and have been grouped under one
heading; consequently the scope of the work is
not indicated by the list of contents: this want
is, however, made good by the index.”
“Tt is seldom an easy matter to give a suitable
name to a book of this description. I am con-
scious that the one I have made choice of displays
vi Preface.
a lack of originality; also, that this kind of title
has been used hitherto for works constructed more
or less on the plan of the famous Naturalist on the
Amazons. After this apology, the reader on his
part, will readily admit that, in treating of the
Natural History of a district so well known and
often described as the southern portion of La Plata,
which has a temperate climate, and where nature
is neither exuberant nor grand, a personal narrative
would have seemed superfluous.”
“Of all animals, birds have perhaps afforded me
the most pleasure; but most of the fresh knowledge
I have been able to collect in this department is
contained in a larger work—Argentine Ornithology—
written in collaboration with Dr P. L. Sclater. As I
have not gone over any of the subjects dealt with
in that work, bird-life has not received more than
a fair share of attention in the present volume.”
W. B.
June 1903.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IT.
PAGE
THE Desert Pampas : ‘ ‘ é ‘ 2 ‘ 1
CHAPTER II.
Tue Puma, on Lion or America . . ‘ ; ; 31
CHAPTER III. .
A Wave or Lirzr . "i : , ‘ F i » 59
CHAPTER IV.
Some Curious ANIMAL Weapons . ; é , . 69
CHAPTER V.
Frar in Birps : : i ‘ ; ; ‘ . 83
CHAPTER VI.
PARENTAL AND Earzty Instincts . ‘ . ‘ - lol
CHAPTER VII.
Tue MepHitio SKUNK . ‘ , 5 A ; - 116
CHAPTER VIII.
Mimicry anp WaRNnina CoLours IN GRASSHOPPERS . 124
CHAPTER IX,
Dracon-FLY SToRMs F A a ‘ : 3 . 130
viii Contents.
CHAPTER X.,
MosquitoEs aND PaRasIts PROBLEMS ‘
CHAPTER XI.
Humpie-Bess AND OTHER Matters
CHAPTER XII.
A Nosie Wasp
CHAPTER XIII.
Natore’s NiGHT-LIGHTS
CHAPTER XIV.
Faots aND THOUGHTS ABOUT SPIDERS
CHAPTER XV.
Tus Deatu-reranine INstTINcT
CHAPTER XVI,
Hummine-Birps ‘ é c ; 3
CHAPTER XVII.
Tue Crestep SorEAMER .
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE WoopHEWwrER FamILy
CHAPTER XIX.
Music anp Danoine In Nature
CHAPTER XX,
BioGRaPHY OF THE VIZCACHA .
CHAPTER XXI.
Tur Dyine Hvawnaco
PAGE
135
154
168
178
200
221
235
289
314
Contents.
CHAPTER XXII.
Tre Strance Instincrs oF Carrie
CHAPTER XXIII.
Horse anp Man
CHAPTER XXIV.
Seen anp Lost
APPENDIX
InDEXx
1x
PAGE
329
348
363
384
391
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Rhea, or S. American Ostrich . : . Frontispiece
White-banded Mocking-bird . : : . TLitle-page
Coypt and young . ‘4 é : : ‘ 12
Carancho £ . . . . é To face 24
Puma killed by Cow. a . a . ; 39
Puma. : ‘ F : To face 56
Armadillo killing sisi. : . . ; : 72
Wrestler Frog . é - 7 é @ 5 77
Ceratophrys ornata : . ; . ‘ : 80
Didelphys azare and young. ; i é . 102
Pampa Sheep. ‘ ‘ : ‘ 2 : 109
Doe safe-guarding young : . ‘ . To face 110
Skunk and Dog . : : . 123
Ixodes ; before and after a Blood Diet ' ‘ é 142
Firewood-gatherer and Bird-fly : . : : 147
A Bee’s Revenge 7 : é * . : 165
Mygale fusca, threatening F . : . ‘ 191
Loddigesia mirabilis. : . : : , 215
Crested Screamer ‘ F . . . : 224
Some Woodhewers’ beaks 5 . ‘ , 239
Ovenbird and Oven : ‘i A : . To face 256
Dance of Ypecaha Rails . ‘ ‘ . . 3 267
Wing-display of Jacanas : . 5 . ‘i 268
Dance of Spur-winged Lapwings - ‘ . , 270
White-banded Mocking-bird . ‘ . , é 277
Vizcachas : ‘ 3 . . _ : 290
Sentinel Huanaco ‘ . . ‘ 5 To face 316
Gaucho . . . . é ; 350
A Lost Hosier: bine : i . ° . 367
Small Spine-tail and Nest é ; 5 7 . 371
THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA.
CHAPTER I.
THE DESERT PAMPAS,
Dorine recent years we have heard much about the
great and rapid changes now going on in the plants
and animals of all the temperate regions of the
globe colonized by Europeans. These changes, if
taken merely as evidence of material progress, must
be a matter of rejoicing to those who are satisfied,
and more than satisfied, with our system of civiliza-
tion, or method of outwitting Nature by the removal
of all checks on the undue increase of our own
species. To one who finds a charm in things as
they exist in the unconquered provinces of Nature’s
dominions, and who, not being over-anxious to reach
the end of his journey, is content to perform it on
horseback, or in a waggon drawn by bullocks, it is
permissible to lament the altered aspect of the
earth’s surface, together with the disappearance of
numberless noble and beautiful forms, both of the
animal and vegetable kingdoms. For he cannot
find it in his heart to love the forms by which they
are replaced ; these are cultivated and domesticated,
and have only become useful to man at the cost of
2 The Naturalist in La Plata.
that grace and spirit which freedom and wildness
give. In numbers they are many—twenty-five
millions of sheep in this district, fifty millions in
that, a hundred millions in a third—but how few
are the species in place of those destroyed? and
when the owner of many sheep and much wheat
desires variety—for he possesses this instinctive
desire, albeit in conflict with and overborne by
the perverted instinct of destruction—what is there
left to him, beyond his very own, except the weeds
that spring up in his fields under all skies, ringing
him round with old-world monotonous forms, as
tenacious of their undesired union with him as the
rats and cockroaches that inhabit his house?
We hear most frequently of North America, New
Zealand, and Australia in this connection; but
nowhere on the globe has civilization “ written
strange defeatures’’ more markedly than on that
great area of level country called by English writers
the pampas, but by the Spanish more appropriately
La Pampa—from the Quichua word signifying open
space or country—since it forms in most part one
continuous plain, extending on its eastern border
from the river Parana, in latitude 32°, to the Pata-
gonian formation on the river Colorado, and com-
prising about two hundred thousand square miles of
humid, grassy country.
This district has been colonized by Europeans
since the middle of the sixteenth century; but
down to within a very few years ago immigration
was on too limited a scale to make any very great
change; and, speaking only of the pampean
country, the conquered territory was a long, thinly-
The Desert Pampas. 3
settled strip, purely pastoral, and the Indians, with
their primitive mode of warfare, were able to keep
back the invaders from the greater portion of their
ancestral hunting-grounds. Not twenty years ago
a ride of two hundred miles, starting from the
capital city, Buenos Ayres, was enough to place one
well beyond the furthest south-western frontier out-
post. In 1879 the Argentine Government deter-
mined to rid the country of the aborigines, or, at all
events, to break their hostile and predatory spirit
once for all; with the result that the entire area of
the grassy pampas, with a great portion of the
sterile pampas and Patagonia, has been made avail-
able to the emigrant. There is no longer anything
to deter the starvelings of the Old World from
possessing themselves of this new land of promise,
flowing, like Australia, with milk and tallow, if not
with honey; any emasculated migrant from a
Genoese or Neapolitan slum is now competent to
“ficht the wilderness’ out there, with his eight-
shilling fowling-piece and the implements of his
trade. The barbarians no longer exist to frighten
his soul with dreadful war cries ; they have moved
away to another more remote and shadowy region,
called in their own language Alhuemapt, and not
known to geographers. For the results so long and
ardently wished for have swiftly followed on General
Roca’s military expedition ; and the changes wit-
nessed during the last decade on the pampas exceed
in magnitude those which had been previously
effected by three centuries of occupation.
In view of this wave of change now rapidly
sweeping away the old order, with whatever beauty
4 The Naturalist in La Plata.
and grace it possessed, it might not seem inoppor-
tune at the present moment to give a rapid sketch,
from the field naturalist’s point of view, of the great
plain, as it existed before the agencies introduced
by European colonists had done their work, and as
it still exists in its remoter parts.
The humid, grassy, pampean country extends,
roughly speaking, half-way from the Atlantic Ocean
and the Plata and Parand rivers to the Andes, and
passes gradually into the “Monte Formation,” or
sterile pampa—a sandy, more or less barren district,
producing a dry, harsh, ligneous vegetation, princi-
pally thorny bushes and low trees, of which the
chafiar (Gurliaca decorticans) isthe most common ;
hence the name of ‘‘ Chafiar-steppe ” used by some
writers: and this formation extends southwards
down into Patagonia. Scientists have not yet been
able to explain why the pampas, with a humid
climate, and a soil exceedingly rich, have produced
nothing but grass, while the dry, sterile territories
on their north, west, and south borders have an
arborescent vegetation. Darwin’s conjecture that
the extreme violence of the pampero, or south-west
wind, prevented trees from growing, is now proved
to have been ill-founded since the introduction of
the Eucalyptus globulus; for this noble tree attains
to an extraordinary height on the pampas, and
exhibits there a luxuriance of foliage never seen in
Australia.
To this level area—my “ parish of Selborne,” or,
at all events, a goodly portion of it—with the sea
on one hand, and on the other the practically
infinite expanse of grassy desert—another sea, not
The Desert Pampas. 5
‘in vast fluctuations fixed,’ but in comparative
calm—lI should like to conduct the reader in ima-
gination: a country all the easier to be imagined
on account of the absence of mountains, woods,
lakes, and rivers. There is, indeed, little to be
imagined—not even a sense of vastness; and
Darwin, touching on this point, in the Jowrnal of a
Naturalist, aptly says :—‘‘ At sea, a person’s eye
being six feet above the surface of the water, his
horizon is two miles and four-fifths distant. In
like manner, the more level the plain, the more
nearly does the horizon approacn within these
narrow limits; and this, in my opinion, entirely
destroys the grandeur which one would have
imagined that a vast plain would have possessed.”
I remember my first experience of a hill, after
having been always shut within “these narrow
limits.” It was one of the range of sierras near
Cape Corrientes, and not above eight hundred feet
high; yet, when I had gained the summit, I was
amazed at the vastness of the earth, as it appeared
to me from that modest elevation. Persons born
and bred on the pampas, when they first visit a
mountainous district, frequently experience a
sensation as of “a ball in the throat,’’ which seems
to prevent free respiration.
In most places the rich, dry soil is occupied by a
coarse grass, three or four feet high, growing in
large tussocks, and all the year round of a deep
green; a few slender herbs and trefoils, with long,
twining stems, maintain a frail existence among
the tussocks; but the strong grass crowds out
most plants, and scarcely a flower relieves its
B
6 The Naturalist in La Plata.
uniform everlasting verdure. There are patches,
sometimes large areas, where it does not grow, and
these are carpeted by small creeping herbs of a
livelier green, and are gay in spring with flowers,
chiefly of the composite and papilionaceous kinds ;
and verbenas, scarlet, purple, rose, and white. On
moist or marshy grounds there are also several
lihes, yellow, white, and red, two or three flags, and
various other small flowers; but altogether the
flora of the pampas is the poorest in species of any
fertile district on the globe. On moist clayey
ground flourishes the stately pampa grass, Gynerium
argenteum, the spears of which often attain a height
of eight or nine feet. I have ridden through many
leagues of this grass with the feathery spikes high
as my head, and often higher. It would be im-
possible for me to give anything like an adequate
idea of the exquisite loveliness, at certain times and
seasons, of this queen of grasses, the chief glory of
the solitary pampa. Everyone is familiar with it in
cultivation; but the garden-plant has a sadly
decaying, draggled look at all times, and to my
mind, is often positively ugly with its dense wither-
ing mass of coarse leaves, drooping on the ground,
and bundle of spikes, always of the same dead
white or dirty cream-colour. Now colour—the
various ethereal tints that give a blush to its cloud-
like purity—is one of the chief beauties of this
grass on its native soil; and travellers who have
galloped across the pampas at a season of the year
when the spikes are dead, and white as paper or
parchment, have certainly missed its greatest charm.
The plant is social, and in some places where
The Desert Pampas. 7
scarcely any other kind exists it covers large areas
with a sea of fleecy-white plumes ; in late summer,
and in autumn, the tints are seen, varying from the
most delicate rose, tender and illusive as the blush
on the white under-plumage of some gulls, to purple
and violaceous. At no time does it look so perfect
as in the evening, before and after sunset, when
the softened light imparts a mistiness to the crowd-
ing plumes, and the traveller cannot help fancying
that the tints, which then seem richest, are caught
from the level rays of the sun, or reflected from the
coloured vapours of the afterglow.
The last occasion on which I saw the pampa
grass in its full beauty was at the close of a bright
day in March, ending in one of those perfect sunsets
seen only in the wilderness, where no lines of house
or hedge mar the enchanting disorder of nature,
and the earth and sky tints are in harmony. I had
been travelling all day with one companion, and for
two hours we had ridden through the matchless
grass, which spread away for miles on every side,
the myriads of white spears, touched with varied
colour, blending in the distance and appearing
almost like the surface of a cloud. Hearing a
swishing sound behind us, we turned sharply round,
and saw, not forty yards away in our rear, a party
of five mounted Indians, coming swiftly towards us:
but at the very moment we saw them their animals
came to a dead halt, and at the same instant the
five riders leaped up, and stood erect on their
horses’ backs. Satisfied that they had no intention
of attacking us, and were only looking out for
strayed horses, we continued watching them for
8 The Naturalist in La Plata.
some time, as they stood gazing away over the plain
in different directions, motionless and silent, like
bronze men on strange horse-shaped pedestals of
dark stone; so dark in their copper skins and long
black hair, against the far-off ethereal sky, flushed
with amber light; and at their feet, and all around,
the cloud of white and faintly-blushing plumes.
That farewell scene was printed very vividly on my
memory, but cannot be shown to another, nor could
it be even if a Ruskin’s pen or a Turner’s pencil
were mine; for the flight of the sea-mew is not
more impossible to us than the power to picture
forth the image of Nature in our souls, when she
reveals herself in one of those ‘‘ special moments”
which have “special grace”’ in situations where
her wild beauty has never been spoiled by man.
At other hours and seasons the general aspect of
the plain is monotonous, and in spite of the un-
obstructed view, and the unfailing verdure and
sunshine, somewhat melancholy, although never
sombre: and doubtless the depressed and melan-
choly feeling the pampa inspires in those who are
unfamiliar with it is due in a great measure to the
paucity of life, and to the profound silence. The
wind, as may well be imagined on that extensive
level area, is seldom at rest ; there, as in the forest,
it is a “‘ bard of many breathings,”’ and the strings
it breathes upon give out an endless variety of
sorrowful sounds, from the sharp fitful sibilations
of the dry wiry grasses on the barren places, to the
long mysterious moans that swell and die in the tall
polished rushes of the marsh. It is also curious to
note that with a few exceptions the resident birds
The Desert Pampas. 9
are comparatively very silent, even those belonging
to groups which elsewhere are highly loquacious.
The reason of this is not far to seek. In woods
and thickets, where birds abound most, they are
continually losing sight of each other, and are only
prevented from scattering by calling often; while
the muffling effect on sound of the close foliage, to
which may be added a spirit of emulation where
many voices are heard, incites most species, especi-
ally those that are social, to exert their voices to
the utmost pitch in singing, calling, and screaming.
On the open pampas, birds, which are not compelled
to live concealed on the surface, can see each other
at long distances, and perpetual calling is not need-
ful: moreover, in that still atmosphere sound travels
far. As arule their voices are strangely subdued ;
nature’s silence has infected them, and they have
become silent by habit. This is not the case with
aquatic species, which are nearly all migrants from
noisier regions, and mass themselves in lagoons and
marshes, where they are all loquacious together. It
is also noteworthy that the subdued bird-voices,
some of which are exceedingly sweet and expressive,
and the notes of many of the insects and batrachians
have a great resemblance, and seem to be in accord
with the wolian tones of the wind in reeds and
grasses: a stranger to the pampas, even a
naturalist accustomed to a different fauna, will
often find it hard to distinguish between bird, frog,
and insect voices.
The mammalia is poor in species, and with the
single exception of the well-known vizcacha
(Lagostomus trichodactylus), there is not one of
10 The Naturalist in La Plata.
which it can traly be said that it isin any special
way the product of the pampas, or, in other words,
that its instincts are better suited to the conditions
of the pampas than to those of other districts. As
a fact, this large rodent inhabits a vast extent of
country, north, west, and south of the true pampas,
but nowhere is he so thoroughly on his native heath
as on the great grassy plain. There, to some extent,
he even makes his own conditions, like the beaver.
He lives in a small community of twenty or thirty
members, in a village of deep-chambered burrows,
all with their pit-like entrances closely grouped
together ; and as the village endures for ever, or for
an indefinite time, the earth constantly being brought
up forms a mound thirty or forty feet in diameter ;
and this protects the habitation from floods on low
or level ground. Again, he is not swift of foot, and
all rapacious beasts are his enemies; he also loves
to feed on tender succulent herbs and grasses, to
seek for which he would have to go far afield among
the giant grass, where his watchful foes are lying
in wait to seize him; he saves himself from this
danger by making a clearing all round his abode,
on which a smooth turf is formed; and here the
animals feed and have their evening pastimes in
comparative security: for when an enemy ap-
proaches, he is easily seen; the note of alarm is
sounded, and the whole company scuttles away to
their refuge. In districts having a different soil
and vegetation, as in Patagonia, the vizcachas’
curious, unique instincts are of no special advantage,
which makes it seem-probable that they have been
formed on the pampas.
Lhe Desert Pampas. It
How marvellous a thing it seems that the two
species of mammalians—the beaver and the vizcacha
—that most nearly simulate men’s intelligent actions
in their social organizing instincts, and their habita-
tions, which are made to endure, should belong to
an order so low down as the Rodents! And in the
case of the latter species, it adds to the marvel when
we find that the vizcacha, according to Water-
house, is the lowest of the order in its marsupial
affinities.
The vizcacha is the most common rodent on the
pampas, and the Rodent order is represented by the
largest number of species. The finest is the so-called
Patagonian hare—Dolichotis patagonica—a beauti-
ful animal twice as large as a hare, with ears shorter
and more rounded, and legs relatively much longer.
The fur is grey and chestnut brown. It is diurnal
in its habits, lives in kennels, and is usually met
with in pairs, or small flocks. Jtis better suited to
a sterile country like Patagonia than to the grassy
humid plain; nevertheless it was found throughout
the whole of the pampas; but in a country where
the wisdom of a Sir William Harcourt was never
needed to slip the leash, this king of the Rodentia
is now nearly extinct.
A common rodent is the coypi—Myiopotamus
coypi—yellowish in colour with bright red incisors ;
a rat in shape, and as large as an otter. It is
aquatic, lives in holes in the banks, and where there
are no banks it makes a platform nest among the
rushes. Of an evening they are all out swimming
and playing in the water, conversing together in
their strange tones, which sound like the moans and
12 The Naturalist in La Plata.
cries of wounded and suffering men; and among
them the mother-coypti is seen with her progeny,
numbering eight or nine, with as many on her back
as she can accommodate, while the others swim after
her, crying for a ride.
With reference to this animal, which, as we have
seen, is prolific, a strange thing once happened in
Buenos Ayres. The coypa was much more abun-
dant fifty years ago than now, and its skin, which
Coypu.
has a fine fur under the long coarse hair, was largely
exported to Hurope. About that time the Dictator
Rosas issued a decree prohibiting the hunting of
the coypt. The result was that the animals in-
creased and multiplied exceedingly, and, abandoning
their aquatic habits, they became terrestrial and
migratory, and swarmed everywhere in search of
food. Suddenly a mysterious malady fell on them,
from which they quickly perished, and became
almost extinct,
The Desert Pampas. 13
What a blessed thing it would be for poor rabbit-
worried Australia if a similar plague should visit
that country, and fall on the right animal! On
the other hand, what a calamity if the infection,
wide-spread, incurable, and swift as the wind in its
course, should attack the too-numerous sheep !
And who knows what mysterious, unheard-of retri-
butions that revengeful deity Nature may not be
meditating in her secret heart for the loss of her °
wild four-footed children slain by settlers, and the
spoiling of her ancient beautiful order !
A small pampa rodent worthy of notice is the
Cavia australis, called cué in the vernacular from
its voice : a timid, social, mouse-coloured little crea-
ture, with a low gurgling language, like running
babbling waters; in habits resembling its domes-
tic pied relation the guinea pig. It loves to run on
clean ground, and on the pampas makes little rat-
roads all about its hiding-place, which little roads
tell a story to the fox, and such like; therefore the
little cavy’s habits, and the habits of all cavies, I
fancy, are not so well suited to the humid grassy
region as to other districts, with sterile ground to
run and play upon, and thickets in which to hide.
A more interesting animal is the Ctenomys
magellanica, a little less than the rat in size, with
a shorter tail, pale grey fur, and red incisors. It
is called tuco-tuco from its voice, and oculto from its
habits; for it is a dweller underground, and re-
quires a loose, sandy soil in which, like the mole, it
may swim beneath the surface. Consequently the
pampa, with its heavy, moist mould, is not the
tuco’s proper place; nevertheless, wherever there
14 The Naturalist in La Plata.
is a stretch of sandy soil, or a range of dunes, there
it is found living; not seen, but heard; for all day
long and all night sounds its voice, resonant and
loud, like a succession of blows from a hammer; as
if a company of gnomes were toiling far down
underfoot, beating on their anvils, first with strong
measured strokes, then with lighter and faster, and
with a swing and rhythm as if the little men were
beating in time to some rude chant unheard above
the surface. How came these isolated colonies of a
species so subterranean in habits, and requiring a
sandy soil to move in, so far from their proper dis-
trict—that sterile country from which they are
separated by wide, unsuitable areas? They cannot
perform long overland journeys like the rat. Perhaps
the dunes have travelled, carrying their little cattle
with them.
Greatest among the carnivores are the two cat-
monarchs of South America, the jaguar and puma.
Whatever may be their relative positions elsewhere,
on the pampas the puma is mightiest, being much
more abundant and better able to thrive than its
spotted rival. Versatile in its preying habits, its
presence on the pampa is not surprising; but pro-
bably only an extreme abundance of large mammalian
prey, which has not existed in recent times, could
have tempted an animal of the river and forest-
loving habits of the jaguar to colonize this cold,
treeless, and comparatively waterless desert. There
are two other important cats. The grass-cat, not
unlike Felis catus in its robust form and dark colour,
but a larger, more powerful animal, inexpressibly
savage in disposition. The second, Felis geoffroyi,
The Desert Pampas. 15
is a larger and more beautiful animal, coloured like
a leopard ; it is called wood-cat, and, as the name
would seem to indicate, is an intruder from wooded
districts north of the pampas.
There are two canines: one is Azara’s beautiful
grey fox-like dog, purely a fox in habits, and
common everywhere. The other is far more
interesting and extremely rare; it is called aguard,
its nearest ally being the aguard-guazi, the Canis
jubatus or maned wolf of naturalists, found
north of the pampean district. The aguara is
smaller and has no mane; it is like the dingo in
size, but slimmer and with a sharper nose, and has
a much brighter red colour. At night when camp-
ing out I have heard its dismal screams, but the
screamer was sought in vain; while from the
gauchos of the frontier I could only learn that it is
a harmless, shy, solitary animal, that ever flies to
remoter wilds from its destroyer, man. They offered
me a skin—what more could I want? Simple
souls! it was no more to me than the skin of a
dead dog, with long, bright red hair. Those who
love dead animals may have them in any number by
digging with a spade in that vast sepulchre of the
pampas, where perished the hosts of antiquity. I
love the living that are above the earth; and how
small a remnant they are in South America we
know, and now yearly becoming more precious as
it dwindles away.
The pestiferous skunk is universal; and there
are two quaint-looking weasels, intensely black in
colour, and grey on the back and flat crown. One,
the Galictis barbara, is a large bold animal that
16 The Naturalist in La Plata.
hunts in companies ; and when these long-bodied
creatures sit up erect, glaring with beady eyes,
grinning and chattering at the passer-by, they look
like little friars in black robes and grey cowls; but
the expression on their round faces is malignant
and bloodthirsty beyond anything in nature, and
it would perhaps be more decent to liken them to
devils rather than to humans.
On the pampas there is, strictly speaking, only
one ruminant, the Cervus campestris, which is
common. The most curious thing about this animal
is that the male emits a rank, musky odour, so
powerful that when the wind blows from it the
effuvium comes in nauseating gusts to the nostrils
from a distance exceeding two miles. It is really
astonishing that only one small ruminant should be
found on this immense grassy area, so admirably
suited to herbivorous quadrupeds, a portion of which
at the present moment affords sufficient pasture to
eighty millions of sheep, cattle, and horses. In La
Plata the author of The Mammoth and the Flood will
find few to quarrel with his doctrine.
Of Edentates there are four. The giant armadillo
does not range so far, and the delicate little pink
fairy armadillo, the truncated Chlamydophorus, is
a dweller in the sand-dunes of Mendoza, and has
never colonized the grassy pampas. The Tatusia
hybrida, called ‘little mule”’ from the length of its
ears, and the Dasypus tricinctus, which, when dis-
turbed, rolls itself into a ball, the wedge-shaped head
and wedge-shaped tail admirably fitting into the
deep-cut shell side by side; and the quirquincho
(Dasypus minutus), all inhabit the pampa, are
The Desert Pampas. 17
diurnal, and feed exclusively on insects, chiefly ants.
Wherever the country becomes settled, these three
disappear, owing to the dulness of their senses,
especially that of sight, and. to the diurnal habit,
which was an advantage to them, and enabled them
to survive when rapacious animals, which are
mostly nocturnal, were their only enemies. The
fourth, and most important, is the hairy armadillo,
with habits which are in strange contrast to those
of its perishing congeners, and which seem to mock
many hard-and-fast rules concerning animal life.
It is omnivorous, and will thrive on anything from
grass to flesh, found dead and in all stages of decay,
or captured by means of its own strategy. Further-
more, its habits change to suit its conditions : thus,
where nocturnal carnivores are its enemies, it is
diurnal; but where man appears as a chief perse-
cutor, it becomes nocturnal. It is much hunted for
its flesh, dogs being trained for the purpose ; yet it
actually becomes more abundant as population
increases in any district ; and, if versatility in habits
or adaptiveness can be taken as a measure of intelli-
gence, this poor armadillo, a survival of the past, so
old on the earth as to have existed contempora-
neously with the giant glyptodon, is the superior of
the large-brained cats and canines.
To finish with the mammalia, there are two
interesting opossums, both of the genus Didelphys,
but in habits as wide apart as cat from otter. One
of these marsupials appears so much at home on
the plains that I almost regret having said that the
vizcacha alone gives us the idea of being in its
habits the product of the pampas. This animal—
18 The Naturalist in La Plata.
Didelphys crassicaudata—has a long slender, wedge-
shaped head and body, admirably adapted for push-
ing through the thick grass and rushes; for it is
both terrestrial and aquatic, therefore well suited
to inhabit low, level plains liable to be flooded. On
dry land its habits are similar to those of a weasel ;
in lagoons, where it dives and swims with great
ease, it constructs a globular nest suspended from
the rushes. The fur is soft, of a rich yellow, reddish
above, and on the sides and under surfaces varying
in some parts to orange, in others exhibiting beau-
tiful copper and terra-cotta tints. These lovely
tints and the metallic lustre soon fade from the fur,
otherwise this animal would be much sought after
in the interests of those who love to decorate them-
selves with the spoils of beautiful dead animals—
beast and bird. The other opossum is the black
and white Didelphys azare; and it is indeed
strange to find this animal on the pampas, although
its presence there is not so mysterious as that of
the tuco-tuco. It shuffles along slowly and awk-
wardly on the ground, but is a great traveller
nevertheless. Tschudi met it mountaineering on
the Andes at an enormous altitude, and, true to its
lawless nature, it confronted me in Patagonia, where
the books say no marsupial dwells. In every way
it is adapted to an arboreal life, yet it is everywhere
found on the level country, far removed from the
conditions which one would imagine to be necessary
to its existence. For how many thousands of years
has this marsupial been a dweller on the plain, all
its best faculties unexercised, its beautiful grasping
hands pressed to the ground, and its prehensile tail
The Desert Pampas. 19
dragged like an idle rope behind it! Yet, if one is
brought to a tree, it will take to it as readily as a
duck to water, or an armadillo to earth, climbing
up the trunk and about the brauches with a monkey-
like agility. How reluctant Nature seems in some
cases to undo her own work! How long she will
allow a specialized organ, with the correlated
instinct, to rest without use, yet ready to flash forth
on the instant, bright and keen-edged, as in the
ancient days of strife, ages past, before peace came
to dwell on earth !
The avi-fauna is relatively much richer than the
mammalia, owing to the large number of aquatic
species, most of which are migratory with their
*‘ breeding”’ or “ subsistence-areas ” on the pampas.
In more senses than one they constitute a “ floating
population,” and their habits have in no way been
modified by the conditions of the country. The
order, including storks, ibises, herons, spoonbills,
and flamingoes, counts about eighteen species; and
the most noteworthy birds in it are two great ibises
nearly as large as turkeys, with mighty resonant
voices. The duck order is very rich, numbering at
least twenty species, including two beautiful upland
geese, winter visitors from Magellanic lands, and
two swans, the lovely black-necked, and the pure
white with rosy bill. Of rails, or ralline birds,
there are ten or twelve, ranging from a small
spotted creature no bigger than a thrush to some
large majestic birds. One is the courlan, called
“crazy widow” from its mourning plumage and
long melancholy screams, which on still evenings
may be heard a league away. Another is the
20 The Naturalist in La Plata.
graceful variegated ypicaha, fond of social gatherings,
where the birds perform a dance and make the
desolate marshes resound with their insane human-
like voices. A smaller kind, Porphyriops melanops,
has a night-cry like a burst of shrill hysterical
laughter, which has won for it the name of “ witch ;”
while another, Rallus rythyrhynchus, is called
“little donkey”’ from its braying cries. Strange
eerie voices have all these birds. Of the remaining
aquatic species, the most important is the spur-
winged crested screamer; a noble bird as large as
a swan, yet its favourite pastime is to soar upwards
until it loses itself to sight in the blue ether, whence
it pours forth its resounding choral notes, which
reach the distant earth clarified, and with a rhythmic
swell and fall as of chiming bells. It also sings by
night, “ counting the hours,” the gauchos say, and
where they have congregated together in tens of
thousands the mighty roar of their combined voices
produces an astonishingly grand effect.
The largest aquatic order is that of the Limicole
—snipes, plover, and their allies—which has about
twenty-five species. The vociferous spur-winged
lapwing; the beautiful black and white stilt; a true
snipe, and a painted snipe, are, strictly speaking,
the only residents; and it is astonishing to find,
that, of the five-and-twenty species, at least thirteen
are visitors from North America, several of them
having their breeding-places quite away in the
Arctic regions. This is one of those facts concern-
ing the annual migration of birds which almost
stagger belief; for among them are species with
widely different habits, upland, marsh and sea-shore
Lhe Desert Pampas. 21
birds, and in their great biannual journey they pass
through a variety of climates, visiting many countries
where the conditions seem suited to their require-
ments. Nevertheless, in September, and even as
early as August, they begin to arrive on the pampas,
the golden plover often still wearing his black
nuptial dress ; singly and in pairs, in small flocks,
and in clouds they come—curlew, godwit, plover,
tatler, tringa—piping the wild notes to which the
Greenlander listened in June, now to the gaucho
herdsman on the green plains of La Plata, then to
the wild Indian in his remote village; and soon,
further south, to the houseless huanaco-hunter in
the grey wilderness of Patagonia.
Here is a puzzle for ornithologists. In summer
on the pampas we have a godwit—Limosa hudsonica ;
in March it goes north to breed; later in the
season flocks of the same species arrive from the
south to winter on the pampas. And besides this
godwit, there are several other North American
species, which have colonies in the southern hemi-
spere, with a reversed migration and breeding
season. Why do these southern birds winter so far
south? Do they really breed in Patagonia? If so,
their migration is an extremely limited one com-
pared with that of the northern birds—seven or
eight hundred miles, on the outside, in one case,
against almost as many thousands of miles in the
other. Considering that some species which mi-
grate as far south as Patagonia breed in the Arctic
regions as far north as latitude 82°, and probably
higher still, it would be strange indeed if none of
the birds which winter in Patagonia and on the
c
22 The Naturalist in La Plata.
pampas were summer visitors to that great austral
continent, which has an estimated area twice as
large as that of Europe, and a climate milder than
the arctic one. The migrants would have about
six hundred miles of sea to cross from Tierra del
Fuego; but we know that the golden plover and
other species, which sometimes touch at the Ber-
mudas when travelling, fly much further than that
without resting. The fact that acommon Argentine
titlark, a non-migrant and a weak flyer, has been
met with at the South Shetland Islands, close to
the antarctic continent, shows that the journey
may be easily accomplished by birds with strong
flight ; and that even the winter climate of that
unknown land is not too severe to allow an acci-
dental colonist, like this small delicate bird, to...
survive. The godwit, already mentioned, has been
observed in flocks at the Falkland Islands in May,
that is, three months after the same species had
taken its autumal departure from the neighbouring
mainland. Can it be believed that these’ late
visitors to the Falklands were breeders in Patagonia,
and had migrated east to winter in so bleak a
region? It is far more probable that they came
from the south. Officers of sailing ships beating
round Cape Horn might be able to settle this ques-
tion definitely by looking out, and listening at
night, for flights of birds, travelling north from
about the first week in January to the end of
February ; and in September and October travel-
ling south. Probably not fewer than a dozen species
of the plover order are breeders on the great austral
continent; also other aquatic birds—ducks and
The Desert Pampas. 23
geese; and many Passerine birds, chiefly of the
Tyrant family.
Should the long projected Australasian expedition
to the South Polar regions ever be carried to a
successful issue, there will probably be important
results for ornithology, in spite of the astounding
theory which has found a recent advocate in Canon
Tristram, that all life originated at the North Pole,
whence it spread over the globe, but never succeeded
in crossing the deep sea surrounding the antarctic
continent, which has consequently remained till now
desolate, ‘“‘a giant ash (and ice) of death.” Nor
is it unlikely that animals of a higher class than
birds exist there; and the discovery of new mam-
malians, differing in type from those we know,
would certainly be glad tidings to most students of
nature.
Land birds on the pampas are few in species and
in numbers. This may be accounted for by the
absence of trees and other elevations on which birds
prefer to roost and nest; and by the scarcity of
food. Insects are few in dry situations; and the
large perennial grasses, which occupy most of the
ground, yield a miserable yearly harvest of a few
minute seeds; so that this district is a poor one
both for soft and hard billed birds. Hawks of
several genera, in moderate numbers, are there, but
generally keep to the marshes. Hagles and vultures
are somewhat unworthily represented by carrion-
hawks (Polyborinz) ; the lordly carancho, almost
eagle-like in size, black and crested, with a very
large, pale blue, hooked beak—his battle axe: and
bis humble follower and jackal, the brown and
24 The Naturalist in La Plata.
harrier-like chimango. These nest on the ground,
are versatile in their habits, carrion-eaters, also
killers on their own account, and, like wild dogs,
sometimes hunt in bands, which gives them an
advantage. They are the unfailing attendants of
all flesh-hunters, human or feline; and also furiously
pursue and persecute all eagles and true vultures
that venture on that great sea of grass, to wander
thereafter, for ever lost and harried, “the Hagars
and Ishmaels of their kind.”
The owls are few and all of wide-ranging species.
The most common is the burrowing-owl, found in
both Americas. Not a retiring ow] this, but all day
long, in cold and in heat, it stands exposed at the
mouth of its kennel, or on the vizcacha’s mound,
staring at the passer-by with an expression of grave
surprise and reprehension in its round yellow eyes;
male and female invariably together, standing stiff
and erect, almost touching—of all birds that pair
for life the most Darby and Joan like.
Of the remaining land birds, numbering about
forty species, a few that are most attractive on
account of their beauty, engaging habits, or large
size, may be mentioned here. On the southern por-
tion of the pampas the military starling (Sturnella)
is found, and looks like the European starling, with
the added beauty of a scarlet breast: among resi-
dent pampas birds the only one with a touch of
brilliant colouring. It has a pleasing, careless song,
uttered on the wing, and in winter congregates in
great flocks, to travel slowly northwards over the
plains. When thus travelling the birds observe a
kind of order, and the flock feeding along the
I
Carancho,
The Desert Pampas. 25
ground shows a very extended front—a representa-
tion in bird-life of the ‘ thin red line ”’—and advances
by the hindmost birds constantly flying over the
others and alighting in the front ranks.
Among the tyrant-birds are several species of the
beautiful wing-banded genus, snow-white in colour.
with black on the wings and tail: these are extreme-
ly graceful birds, and strong flyers, and in desert
places, where man seldom intrudes, they gather to
follow the traveller, calling to each other with low
whistling notes, and in the distance look like white
flowers as they perch on the topmost stems of the
tall bending grasses.
The most characteristic pampean birds are the
tinamous—called partridges in the vernacular—
the rufous tinamou, large as a fowl, and the
spotted tinamou, which is about the size of the
English partridge. Their habits are identical : both
lay eggs of a beautiful wine-purple colour, and in
both species the young acquire the adult plumage
and power of flight when very small, and fly better
than the adults. They have small heads, slender
curved beaks, unfeathered legs and feet, and are
tailless; the plumage is deep yellowish, marked
with black and brown above. They live concealed,
skulking like rails through the tall grass, fly reluc-
tantly, and when driven up, their flight is exceed-
ingly noisy and violent, the bird soon exhausting it-
self. They are solitary, but many live in proximity,
frequently calling to each other with soft plaintive
voices. The evening call-notes of the larger bird
are flute-like in character, and singularly sweet and
expressive.
26 The Naturalist in La Plata.
The last figure to be introduced into this sketch
—which is not a catalogue—is that of the Rhea.
Glyptodon, Toxodon, Mylodon, Megatherium, have
passed away, leaving no descendants, and only pigmy
representatives if any; but among the feathered
inhabitants of the pampa the grand archaic ostrich
of America survives from a time when there were
also yriants among the avians. Vain as such efforts
usually are, one cannot help trying to imagine some-
thing of the past history of this majestic bird, before
man came to lead the long chase now about to end
so mournfully. Its fleetness, great staying powers,
and beautiful strategy when hunted, make it seem
probable that it was not without pursuers, other
than the felines, among its ancient enemies, long-
winded and tenacious of their quarry; and these
were perhaps of a type still represented by the
wolf or hound-like aguaraé and aguara-guazu. It
might be supposed that when almost all the larger
forms, both mammal and bird, were overtaken by
destruction, and when the existing rhea was on the
verge of extinction, these long-legged swift canines
changed their habits and lost their bold spirit,
degenerating at last into hunters of small birds and
mammals, on which they are said to live.
The rhea possesses a unique habit, which is a
puzzle to us, although it probably once had some
significance—namely, that of running, when hunted,
with one wing raised vertically, like a great sail—a
veritable “ship of the wilderness.” In every way
it is adapted to the conditions of the pampas in a
far greater degree than other pampean birds, only
excepting the rufous and spotted tinamous. Its
Lhe Desert Pampas. 27
commanding stature gives it a wide horizon; and
its dim, pale, bluish-grey colour assimilates to that
of the haze, and renders it invisible at even a mode-
rate distance. Its large form fades out of sight
mysteriously, and the hunter strains his eyes in vain
to distinguish it on the blue expanse. Its figure
and carriage have a quaint majestic grace, somewhat
unavian in character, and peculiar to itself. Theré
are few more strangely fascinating sights in nature
than that of the old black-necked cock bird, stand-
ing with raised agitated wings among the tall plumed
grasses, and calling together his scattered hens
with hollow boomings and long mysterious suspira-
tions, as if a wind blowing high up in the void sky
had found a voice. Rhea-hunting with the bolas,
on a horse possessing both speed and endurance,
and trained to follow the bird in all his quick
doublings, is unquestionably one of the most fasci-
nating forms of sport ever invented by man. The
quarry has even more than that fair chance of
escape, without which all sport degenerates into
mere butchery, unworthy of rational beings ; more-
over, in this unique method of hunting the ostrich
the capture depends on a preparedness for all the
shifts and sudden changes of course practised by
the bird when closely followed, which is like instinct
or intuition; and, finally, in a dexterity in casting
the bolas at the right moment, with a certain aim,
which no amount of practice can give to those who
are not to the manner born.
This ‘wild mirth of the desert,’ which the gaucho
has known for the last three centuries, is now pass-
ing away, for the rhea’s fleetness can no longer
28 The Naturalist in La Plata.
avail him. He may scorn the horse and his rider,
what time he lifts himself up, but the cowardly
murderous methods of science, and a systematic
war of extermination, have left him no chance.
And with the rhea go the flamingo, antique and
splendid; and the swans in their bridal plumage ;
and the rufous tinamou—sweet and mournful melo-
dist of the eventide ; and the noble crested screamer,
that clarion-voiced watch-bird of the night in the
wilderness. These, and the other large avians, to-
gether with the finest of the mammalians, will
shortly be lost to the pampas utterly as the great
bustard is to England, and as the wild turkey and
bison and many other species will shortly be lost to
North America. What a wail there would be in the
world if a sudden destruction were to fall on the
accumulated art-treasures of the National Gallery,
and the marbles in the British Museum, and the
contents of the King’s Library—the old prints and
medieval illuminations! And these are only the
work of human hands and brains—impressions of
individual genius on perishable material, immortal
only in the sense that the silken cocoon of the dead
moth 1s so, because they continue to exist and shine
when the artist’s hands and brain are dust :—and
man has the long day of life before him in which to
do again things like these, and better than these, if
there is any truth in evolution. But the forms of
life in the two higher vertebrate classes are Nature’s
most perfect work; and the life of even a single
species is of incalculably greater value to mankind,
for what it teaches and would continue to teach,
than all the chiselled marbles and painted canvases
The Desert Pampas. 29
the world contains; though doubtless there are
many persons who are devoted to art, but blind to
some things greater than art, who will set me down
as a Philistine for sayingso. And, above all others,
we should protect and hold sacred those types,
Nature’s masterpieces, which are first singled out
for destruction on account of their size, or splendour,
or rarity, and that false detestable glory which is
accorded to their most successful slayers. In
ancient times the spirit of life shone brightest in
these; and when others that shared the earth with
them were taken by death they were left, being
more worthy of perpetuation. Like immortal
flowers they have drifted down to us on the ocean of
time, and their strangeness and beauty bring to our
imaginations a dream and a picture of that unknown
world, immeasurably far removed, where man was
not: and when they perish, something of gladness
goes out from nature, and the sunshine loses some-
thing of its brightness. Nor does their loss affect
us and our times only. The species now being
exterminated, not only in South America but every-
where on the globe, are, so far as we know, un-
touched by decadence. They are links in a chain,
and branches on the tree of life, with their roots in
a past inconceivably remote ; and but for our action
they would continue to flourish, reaching outward
to an equally distant future, blossoming into higher
and more beautiful forms, and gladdening innumer-
able generations of our descendants. But we think
nothing of all this: we must give full scope to our
passion for taking life, though by so doing we “ruin
the great work of time ;’’ not in the sense in which
30 The Naturalist nn La Plata.
the poet used those words, but in one truer, and
wider, and infinitely sadder. Only when this sport-
ing rage has spent itself, when there are no longer
any animals of the larger kinds remaining, the loss
we are now inflicting on this our heritage, in which
we have a life-interest only, will be rightly appreci-
ated. It is hardly to be supposed or hoped that
posterity will feel satisfied with our monographs of
extinct species, and the few crumbling bones and
faded feathers, which may possibly survive half a
dozen centuries in some happily-placed museum.
On the contrary, such dreary mementoes will only
serve to remind them of their loss; and if they
remember us at all, it will only be to hate our
memory, and our age—this enlightened, scientific,
humanitarian age, which should have for a motto
‘“‘ Let us slay all noble and beautiful things, for to-
morrow we die.”
CHAPTER II.
TIE PUMA, OR LION OF AMERIOA.
Tae Puma has been singularly unfortunate in its
biographers. Formerly it often happened that
writers were led away by isolated and highly exag-
gerated incidents to attribute very shining quali-
ties to their favourite animals; the lion of the Old
World thus came to be regarded as brave and
magnanimous above all beasts of the ficld—the
Bayard of the four-footed kind, a reputation which
these prosaic and sceptical times have not suffered
it to keep. Precisely the contrary has happened
with the puma of literature; for, although to those
personally acquainted with the habits of this lesser
lion of the New World it is known to possess a
marvellous courage and daring, it is nevertheless
always spoken of in books of natural history as the
most pusillanimous of the larger carnivores. It
does not attack man, and Azara is perfectly correct
when he affirms that it never hurts, or threatens to
hurt, man or child, even when it finds them sleep-
ing. This, however, is not a full statement of the
facts; the puma will not even defend itself against
man. How natural, then, to conclude that it is too
timid to attack a human being, or to defend itself,
but scarcely philosophical; for even the most
cowardly carnivores we know—dogs and hyenas,
32 The Naturalist tn La Plata.
for instance—will readily attack a disabled or
sleeping man when pressed by hunger; and when
driven to desperation ho animal is too small or too
feeble to make a show of resistance. In such acase
“even the armadillo defends itself,’ as the gaucho
proverb says. Besides, the conclusion is in contra-
diction to many other well-known facts. Putting
aside the puma’s passivity in the presence of man,
it is a bold hunter that invariably prefers large to
small game; in desert places killing peccary, tapir,
ostrich, deer, huanaco, &c., all powerful, well-armed,
or swift animals. Huanaco skeletons seen in
Patagonia almost invariably have the neck dis-
located, showing that the puma was the executioner.
Those only who have hunted the huanaco on the
sterile plains and mountains it inhabits know how
wary, keen-scented, and fleet of foot it is. I
once spent several weeks with a surveying party
in a district where pumas were very abundant, and
saw not less than half a dozen deer every day,
freshly killed in most cases, and all with dislocated
necks. Where prey is scarce and difficult to capture,
the puma, after satisfying its hunger, invariably
conceals the animal it has killed, covering it over
carefully with grass and brushwood; these deer,
however, had all been left exposed to the caracaras
and foxes after a portion of the breast had been
eaten, and in many cases the flesh had not been
touched, the captor having satisfied itself with
sucking the blood. It struck me very forcibly that
the puma of the desert pampas is, among mammals,
like the peregrine falcon of the same district among
birds; for there this wide-ranging raptor oniy
The Puma, or Lion of America. 33
attacks comparatively large birds, and, after fastidi-
ously picking a meal from the flesh of the head and
neck, abandons the untouched body to the polybori
and other hawks of the more ignoble sort.
In pastoral districts the puma is very destructive
to the larger domestic animals, and has an extra-
ordinary fondness for horseflesh. This was first
noticed by Molina, whose Natural History of Chili
was written a century andahalfago. In Patagonia
T heard on all sides that it was extremely difficult
to breed horses, as the colts were mostly killed by
the pumas. A native told me that on one occasion,
while driving his horses home through the thicket, a
puma sprang out of the bushes on to a colt following
behind the troop, killing it before his eyes and not
more than six yards from his horse’s head. In this
instance, my informant said, the puma alighted
directly on the colt’s back, with one fore foot
grasping its bosom, while with the other it seized
the head, and, giving it a violent wrench, dislocated
the neck. The colt fell to the earth as if shot, and
he affirmed that it was dead before it touched the
ground.
Naturalists have thought it strange that the
horse, once common throughout America, should
have become extinct over a continent apparently so
well suited to it and where it now multiplies so
greatly. As a fact wherever pumas abound the
wild horse of the present time, introduced from
Europe, can hardly maintain its existence. Formerly
in many places horses ran wild and multiplied to an
amazing extent, but this happened, I believe, only
in districts where the puma was scarce or had
34 The Naturalist in La Plata.
already been driven out by man. My own ex-
perience is that on the desert pampas wild horses
are exceedingly scarce, and from all accounts it
is the same throughout Patagonia.
Next to horseflesh sheep is preferred, and where
the puma can come at a flock, he will not trouble
himself to attack horned cattle. In Patagonia
especially I found this to be the case. I resided
for some time at an estancia close to the town of
El Carmen, on the Rio Negro, which during my
stay was infested by a very bold and cunning
puma. To protect the sheep from his attacks an
enclosure was made of upright willow-poles fifteen
feet long, while the gate, by which he would have
to enter, was close to the house and nearly six
feet high. In spite of the difficulties thus put in
the way, and of the presence of several large dogs,
also of the watch we kept in the hope of shooting
him, every cloudy night he came, and after killing
one or more sheep got safely away. One dark
night he killed four sheep; I detected him in the
act, and going up to the gate, was trying to make
out his invisible form in the gloom as he flitted
about knocking the sheep over, when suddenly he
leaped clear over my head and made his escape,
the bullets I sent after him in the dark failing to
hit him. Yet at this place twelve or fourteen calves,
belonging to the milch cows, were every night shut
into a small brushwood pen, at a distance from the
house where the enemy could easily have destroyed
every one of them. When I expressed surprise at
this arrangement, the owner said that the puma was
not fond of calves’ flesh, and came only for the
The Puma, or Lion of America. 35
sheep. Frequently after his nocturnal visits we
found, by tracing his footprints in the loose sand,
that he had actually used the calves’ pen as a
place of concealment while waiting to make his
attack on the sheep.
The puma often kills full-grown cows and horses,
but exhibits a still greater daring when attacking
the jaguar, the largest of American carnivores,
although, compared with its swift, agile enemy, as
heavy as a rhinoceros, Azara states that it is
generally believed in La Plata and Paraguay that
the puma attacks and conquers the jaguar; but he
did not credit what he heard, which was not strange,
since he had already set the puma down as a
cowardly animal, because it does not attempt to
harm man or child. Nevertheless, it is well known
that where the two species inhabit the same dis-
trict they are at enmity, the puma being the per-
sistent persecutor of the jaguar, following and
harassing it as atyrant-bird harasses an eagle or
hawk, moving about it with such rapidity as to
confuse it, and, when an opportunity occurs,
springing upon its back and inflicting terrible
wounds with teeth and claws. Jaguars with scarred
backs are frequently killed, and others, not long
escaped from their tormentors, have been found
so greatly lacerated that they were easily overcome
by the hunters.
In Kingsley’s American Standard Natural His-
tory, it is stated that the puma in North Cali-
fornia has a feud with the grizzly bear similar to
that of the southern animal with the jaguar. In
its encounter with the grizzly it is said to be always
D
a6 The Naturalist in La Plata.
the victor; and this is borne out by the finding
of the bodies of bears, which have evidently
perished in the struggle.
How strange that this most cunning, bold, and
bloodthirsty of the Felide, the persecutor of the
jaguar and the scourge of the ruminants in the
regions it inhabits, able to kill its prey with the
celerity of a rifle bullet, never attacks a human
being! Even the cowardly, carrion-feeding dog
will attack a man when it can do so with impunity ;
but in places where the puma is the only large
beast of prey, it is notorious that it is there per-
fectly safe for even a small child to go out and
sleep on the plain. At the same time it will not
fly from man (though the contrary is always stated
in books of Natural History) except in places where
it is continually persecuted. Nor is this all: it
will not, as a rule, even defend itself against man,
although in some rare instances it has been known
to do so.
The mysterious, gentle instinct of this ungentle
species, which causes the gauchos of the pampas
to name it man’s friend—‘“‘ amigo del cristiano ”’—
has been persistently ignored by all travellers and
naturalists who have mentioned the puma. They
have thus made it a very incongruous creature,
strong enough to kill a horse, yet so cowardly
withal that it invariably flies from a human being—
even from a sleeping child! Possibly its real re-
putation was known to some of those who have
spoken about it; if so, they attributed what they
heard to the love of the marvellous and the ro-
mantic, natural to the non-scientific mind; or else
The Puma, or Lion of America. 37
preferred not to import into their writings matter
which has so great a likeness to fable, and might
have the effect of imperilling their reputation for
sober-mindedness.
It is, however, possible that the singular instinct
of the southern puma, which is unique among
animals in a state of nature, is not possessed by the
entire species, ranging as it does over a hundred
degrees: of latitude, from British North America to
Tierra del Fuego. The widely different conditions
of life in the various regions it inhabits must
necessarily have caused some divergence. Con-
cerning its habits in the dense forests of the Ama-
zonian region, where it must have developed special
instincts suited to its semi-arboreal life, scarcely
anything has been recorded. Hveryone is, however,
familiar with the dreaded cougar, catamount, or
panther—sometimes called “ painter’”’—of North
American literature, thrilling descriptions of en-
counters with this imaginary man-eating monster
being freely scattered through the backwoods or
border romances, many of them written by authors
who have the reputation of being true to nature.
It may be true that this cougar of a cold climate
did occasionally attack man, or, as it is often
stated, follow him in the forest with the intention
of springing on him unawares; but on this point
nothing definite will ever be known, as the pioneers
and hunters of the past were only anxious to shoot
the cougar and not to study its instinct and dis-
position. It is now many years since Audubon
and Bachman wrote, “ This animal, which has ex-
cited so much terror in the minds of the ignorant
38 The Naturalist tn La Plata.
and timid, has been uearly exterminated in all
the Atlantic States, and we do not recollect a
single well-authenticated instance where any hunter’s
life fell a sacrifice in a cougar hunt.” It might be
added, I believe, that no authentic instance has been
recorded of the puma making an unprovoked attack
on any human being. In South America also the
traveller in the wilderness is sometimes followed by
apuma; but he would certainly be very much
surprised if told that it follows with the intention
of springing on him unawares and devouring his
flesh.
I have spoken of the comparative ease with
which the puma overcomes even large animals,
comparing it in this respect with the peregrine
falcon ; but all predacious species are lable to fre-
quent failures, sometimes to fatal mishaps, and even
the cunning, swift-killing puma is no exception, Its
attacks are successfully resisted by the ass, which
does not, like the horse, lose his presence of mind,
but when assaulted thrusts his head well down be-
tween its fore-legs and kicks violently until the
enemy is thrown or driven off. Pigs, when in
large herds, also safely defy the puma, massing
themselves together for defence in their well-known
manner, and presenting a serried line of tusks to
the aggressor. During my stay in Patagonia a
puma met its fate in a manner so singular that the
incident caused considerable sensation among the
settlers on the Rio Negro at the time. A man
named Linares, the chief of the tame Indians settled
in the neighbourhood of El Carmen, while riding
near the river had his curiosity aroused by the
The Puma, or Lion of America. 39
appearance and behaviour of a young cow standing
alone in the grass, her head, armed with long and
exceedingly sharp horns, much raised, and watching
his approach in a manner which betokened a state
of dangerous excitement. She had recently dropped
her calf, and he at once conjectured that it had
been attacked, and perhaps killed, by some animal
of prey. To satisfy himself on this point he began
to search for it, and while thus engaged the cow
Puma killed hv Cow
repeatedly charged him with the greatest fury.
Presently he discovered the calf lying dead among
the long grass; and by its side lay a full-grown
puma, also dead, and with a large wound in its
side, just behind the shoulder. The calf had been
killed by the puma, for its throat showed the wounds
of large teeth, and the puma had been killed by
the cow. When he saw it he could, he affirmed,
scarcely believe the evidence of his own senses, for
it was an unheard-of thing that a puma should be
40 The Naturalist in La Plata.
injured by any other animal. His opinion was that
it had come down from the hills in a starving con-
dition, and having sprung upon the calf, the taste
of blood had made it for a moment careless of its
own safety, and during that moment the infuriated
cow had charged, and driving one of her long sharp
horns into some vital part, killed it instantly.
The puma is, with the exception of some monkeys,
the most playful animal in existence. The young
of all the Felide spend a large portion of their
time in characteristic gambols ; the adults, however,
acquire a grave and dignified demeanour, only the
female playing on occasions with her offspring ; but
this she always does with a certain formality of
manner, as if the relaxation were indulged in not
spontaneously, but for the sake of the young and as
being a necessary part of their education. Some
writer has described the lion’s assumption of gaiety as
more grim than its most serious moods. The puma
at heart is always a kitten, taking unmeasured delight
in its frolics, and when, as often happens, one lives
alone in the desert, it will amuse itself by the hour
fighting mock battles or playing at hide-and-seek
with imaginary companions, and lying in wait and
putting all its wonderful strategy in practice to
capture a passing butterfly. Azara kept a young
male for four months, which spent its whole time
playing with the slaves. This animal, he says,
would not refuse any food offered to it ; but when
not hungry it would bury the meat in the sand, and
when inclined to eat dig it up, and, taking it to the
water-trough, wash it clean. I have only known
one puma kept as a pet, and this animal, in seven
The Puma, or Lion of America. Al
or eight years had never shown a trace of ill-
temper. When approached, he would lie down,
purring loudly, and twist himself about a person’s
legs, begging to be caressed. A string or hand-
kerchief drawn about was sufficient to keep him ina
happy state of excitement for an hour; and when
one person was tired of playing with him he was
ready for a game with the next comer.
I was told by a person who had spent most of
his life on the pampas that on one occasion, when
travelling in the neighbourhood of Cape Corrientes,
his horse died under him, and he was compelled to
continue his journey on foot, burdened with his
heavy native horse-gear. At night he made his
bed under the shelter of a rock, on the slope of a
stony sierra; a bright moon was shining, and
about nine o’clock in the evening four pumas
appeared, two adults with their two half-grown
young. Not feeling the least alarm at their pre-
sence, he did not stir ; and after a while they began
to gambol together close to him, concealing them-
selves from each other among the rocks, just as
kittens do, and frequently while pursuing one
another leaping over him. He continued watching
them until past midnight, then fell asleep, and
did not wake until morning, when they had left
him.
This man was an Englishman by birth, but
» having gone very young to South America he had
taken kindly to the semi-barbarous life of the
gauchos, and had imbibed all their peculiar notions,
one of which is that human life is not worth very
much. “What does it matter?” they often say,
42 The Naturalist in La Plata.
and shrug their shoulders, when told of a comrade’s
death ; “so many beautiful horses die!” I asked
him if he had ever killed a puma, and he replied
that he had killed only one and had sworn never to
kill another. He said that while out one day with
another gaucho looking for cattle a puma was
found. It sat up with its back against a stone, and
did not move even when his companion threw the
noose of his lasso over its neck. My informant
then dismounted, and, drawing his knife, advanced
to kill it: still the puma made no attempt to free
itself from the lasso, but it seemed to know, he
said, what was coming, for it began to tremble, the
tears ran from its eyes, and it whined in the most
pitiful manner. He killed it as it sat there unre-
sisting before him, but after accomplishing the
deed felt that he had committed a murder. It was
the only thing he had ever done in his life, he
added, which filled him with remorse when he
remembered it. This I thought a rather startling
declaration, as I knew that he had killed several
individuals of his own species in duels, fought
with knives, in the fashion of the gauchos.
All who have killed or witnessed the killing of
the puma—and I have questioned scores of hunters
on this point—agree that it resigns itself in this
unresisting, pathetic manner to death at the hands
of man. Claudio Gay, in his Natural History of
Chili, says, ‘‘ When attacked by man its energy and
daring at once forsake it, and it becomes a weak,
inoffensive animal, and trembling, and uttering
piteous moans, and shedding abundant tears, it
seems to implore compassion from a generous
The Puma, or Lion of America. 43
enemy.” The enemy is not often generous; but
many gauchos have assured me, when speaking on
this subject, that although they kill the puma readily
to protect their domestic animals, they consider it
an evil thing to take its life in desert places, where
it is man’s only friend among the wild animals.
When the hunter is accompanied by dogs, then
the puma, instead of drooping and shedding tears,
is roused to a sublime rage: its hair stands erect ;
its eyes shine like balls of green flame ; it spits and
snarls like a furious tom cat. The hunter’s pre-
sence seems at such times to be ignored altogether,
its whole attention being given to the dogs and its
rage directed against them. In Patagonia a sheep-
farming Scotchman, with whom I spent some days,
showed me the skulls of five pumas which he had
shot in the vicinity of his ranche. One was of an
exceptionally large individual, and I here relate
what he told me of his encounter with this animal,
as it shows just how the puma almost invariably
behaves when attacked by man and dogs. He was
out on foot with his flock, when the dogs discovered
the animal concealed among the bushes. He had
left his gun at home, and having no weapon, and
finding that the dogs dared not attack it where it
sat in a defiant attitude with its back against a
thorny bush, he looked about and found a large dry
stick, and going boldly up to it tried to stun it
with a violent blow on the head. But though it
never looked at him, its fiery eyes gazing steadily at
the dogs all the time, he could not hit it, for with a
quick side movement it avoided every blow. The
small heed the puma paid him, and the apparent
44 The Naturalist in La Plata.
ease with which it avoided his best-aimed blows,
only served to rouse his spirit, and at length striking
with increased force his stick came to the ground
and was broken to pieces. For some moments he
now stood within two yards of the animal perfectly
defenceless and not knowing what to do. Suddenly
it sprang past him, actually brushing against his arm
with its side, and began pursuing the dogs round
and round among the bushes. In the end my
informant’s partner appeared on the scene with his
rifle, and the puma was shot.
In encounters of this kind the most curious thing
is that the puma steadfastly refuses to recognize an
enemy in man, although it finds him acting in
concert with its hated canine foe, about whose
hostile intentions it has no such delusion.
Several years ago a paragraph, which reached
me in South America, appeared in the English
papers relating an incident characteristic of the
puma in a wild beast show in this country. The
animal was taken out of its cage and led about the
grounds by its keeper, followed by a large number
of spectators. Suddenly it was struck motionless
by some object in the crowd, at which it gazed
steadily with a look of intense excitement; then
springing violently away it dragged the chain from
the keeper’s hand and dashed in among the people,
who immediately fed screaming in all directions.
Their fears were, however, idle, the object of the
puma’s rage being a dog which it had spied among
the crowd.
It is said that when taken adult pumas invariably
pine away and die; when brought up in captivity
The Puma, or Lion of America. 45
they invariably make playful, affectionate pets, and
are gentle towards all human beings, but very
seldom overcome their instinctive animosity towards
the dog.
One of the very few authentic instances I have
met with of this animal defending itself against a
human being was related to me at a place on the
pampas called Saladillo. At the time of my visit
there jaguars and prmas were very abundant and
extremely destructive to the cattle and horses.
Sheep it had not yet been considered worth while
to introduce, but immense herds of pigs were kept
at every estancia, these animals being able to pro-
tect themselves. One gaucho had so repeatedly
distinguished himself by his boldness and dexterity
in killing jaguars that he was by general consent
made the leader of every tiger-hunt. One day the
comandante of the district got twelve or fourteen
men together, the tiger-slayer among them, and
started in search of a jaguar which had been seen
that morning in the neighbourhood of his estancia.
The animal was eventually found and surrounded,
and as it was crouching among some clumps of tall
pampas grass, where throwing a lasso over its neck
would be a somewhat difficult and dangerous opera-
tion, all gave way to the famous hunter, who at
once uncoiled his lasso and proceeded in a leisurely
manner to form the loop. While thus engaged he
made the mistake of allowing his horse, which had
grown restive, to turn aside from the hunted animal.
The jaguar, instantly taking advantage of the over-
sight, burst from its cover and sprang first on to the
haunches of the horse, then seizing the hunter by
46 The Naturalist in La Plata.
his poncho dragged him to the earth, and would no
doubt have quickly despatched him if a lasso, thrown
by one of the other men, had not closed round its
neck at this critical moment. It was quickly dragged
off, and eventually killed. But the discomfited
hunter did not stay to assist at the finish. He arose
from the ground unharmed, but in a violent passion
and blaspheming horribly, for he knew that his
reputation, which he prized above everything, had
suffered a great blow, and that he would be
mercilessly ridiculed by his associates. Getting on
his horse he rode away by himself from the scene
of his misadventure. Of what happened to him on
his homeward ride there were no witnesses; but
his own account was as follows, and inasmuch as it
told against his own prowess it was readily believed :
Before riding a league, and while his bosom was
still burning with rage, a puma started up from the
long grass in his path, but made no attempt to run
away ; it merely sat up, he said, and looked at him
in a provokingly fearless manner. To slay this
animal with his knife, and so revenge himself on it
for the defeat he had just suffered, was his first
thought. He alighted and secured his horse by
tying its fore feet together, then, drawing his long,
heavy knife, rushed at the puma. Still it did not
stir. Raising his weapon he struck with a force
which would have split the animal’s skull open if
the blow had fallen where it was intended to fall,
but with a quick movement the puma avoided it,
and at the same time lifted a foot and with lightning
rapidity dealt the aggressor a blow on the face, its
unsheathed claws literally dragging down the flesh
Lhe Puma, or Lion of America. 47
from his cheek, laying the bone bare. After in-
flicting this terrible punishment and eyeing its
fallen foe for a few seconds it trotted quietly away.
The wounded man succeeded in getting on to his
horse and reaching his home. The hanging flesh was
restored to its place and the ghastly rents sewn
up, and in the end he recovered: but he was dis-
figured for life; his temper also completely changed ;
he became morose and morbidly sensitive to the
ridicule of his neighbours, and he never again
ventured to join them in their hunting expeditions.
I inquired of the comandante, and of others,
whether any case had come to their knowledge in
that district in which the puma had shown anything
beyond a mere passive friendliness towards man ; in
reply they related the following incident, which had
occurred at the Saladillo a few years before my
visit: The men all went out one day beyond the
frontier to form a cerco, as it is called, to hunt
ostriches and other game. The hunters, number-
ing about thirty, spread themselves round in a vast
ring and, advancing towards the centre, drove the
animals before them. During the excitement of the
chase which followed, while they were all engaged
in preventing the ostriches, deer, &c., from doubling
back and escaping, it was not noticed that one of
the hunters had disappeared ; his horse, however, re-
turned to its home during the evening, and on the
next morning a fresh hunt for the lost man was
organized. He was eventually found lying on the
ground with a broken leg, where he had been thrown
at the beginning of the hunt. He related that
about an hour after it had become dark a puma
48 The Naturalist tn La Plata.
appeared and sat near him, but ‘did not seem to
notice him. After a while it became restless, fre-
quently going away and returning, and finally it
kept away so long, that he thought it had left him
for good. About midnight he heard the deep roar
of ajaguar, and gave himself up for lost. By raising
himself on his elbow he was able to see the outline
of the beast crouching near him, but its face was
turned from him, and it appeared to be intently
watching some object on which it was about to
spring. Presently it crept out of sight, then he
heard snarlings and growlings and the sharp yell of
a puma, and he knew that the two beasts were
fighting. Before morning he saw the jaguar several
times, but the puma renewed the contest with it
again and again until morning appeared, after which
he saw and heard no more of them.
Extraordinary as this story sounds, it did not
seem so to me when I heard it, for I had already
met with many anecdotes of a similar nature in
various parts of the country, some of them vastly
more interesting than the one I have just narrated ;
only I did not get them at first hand, and am con-
sequently not able to vouch for their accuracy ; but
in this case it seemed to me that there was really
no room for doubt. All that I had previously heard
had compelled me to believe that the puma really
does possess a unique instinct of friendliness for
man, the origin of which, like that of many other well-
known instincts of animals, must remain a mystery.
The fact that the puma never makes an unprovoked
attack on a human being, or eats human flesh, and
that it refuses, except in some very rare cases, even
The Puma, or Lion of America. 49
to defend itself, does not seem really less wonderful
in an animal of its bold and sanguinary temper than
that it should follow the traveller in the wilderness,
or come near him when he lies sleeping or disabled,
and even occasionally defend him from its enemy
the jaguar. We know that certain sounds, colours,
or smells, which are not particularly noticed by
most animals, produce an extraordinary effect on
some species; and it is possible to believe, I think,
that the human form or countenance, or the odour
of the human body, may also have the effect on the
puma of suspending its predatory instincts and in-
spiring it with a gentleness towards man, which we
are only accustomed to see in our domesticated
carnivores or in feral animals towards those of their
own species. Wolves, when pressed with hunger,
will sometimes devour a fellow wolf; as a rule,
however, rapacious animals will starve to death
rather than prey on one of their own kind, nor is it
a common thing for them to attack other species
possessing instincts similar to their own. The
puma, we have seen, violently attacks other large
carnivores, not to feed on them, but merely to
satisfy its animosity ; and, while respecting man, it
is, within the tropics, a great hunter and eater of
monkeys, which of all animals most resemble men,
We can only conclude with Humboldt that there is
something mysterious in the hatreds and affections
of animals.
The view here taken of the puma’s character
imparts, I think, a fresh interest to some things
concerning the species, which have appeared in
50 The Naturalist in La Plata.
historical and other works, and which I propose to
discuss briefly in this place.
There is a remarkable passage in Byron’s Nar-
rative of the loss of the Wager, which was quoted
by Admiral Fitzroy in his Voyage of the Beagle,
to prove that the puma inhabits Tierra del Fuego
and the adjacent islands; no other large beast of
prey being known in that part of America. “I
heard,” he says, “a growling close by me, which
made me think it advisable to retire as soon as
possible: the woods were so gloomy I could see
nothing; but, as I retired, this noise followed me
close till I got out of them. Some of our men did
assure me that they had seen a very large beast in
the woods. . . I proposed to four of the people to
go to the end of the bay, about two miles distant
from the bell tent, to occupy the skeleton of an old
Indian wigwam, which I had discovered in a walk
that way on our first landing. This we covered to
windward with seaweed; and, lighting a fire, laid
ourselves down in hopes of finding a remedy for our
hunger in sleep; but we had not long composed
ourselves before one of our company was disturbed |
by the blowing of some animal at his face; and,
upon opening his eyes, was not a little astonished
to see by the glimmering of the fire, a large beast
standing over him. He had presence of mind
enough to snatch a brand from the fire, which was
now very low, and thrust it at the nose of the
animal, which thereupon made off... . In the
morning we were not a little anxious to know how
our companions had fared; and this anxiety was
increased upon our tracing the footsteps of the
The Puma, or Lion of America. 51
beast in the sand, in a direction towards the bell
tent. The impression was deep and plain, of a
large round foot well furnished with claws. Upon
acquainting the people in the tent with the circum-
stances of our story, we found that they had been
visited by the same unwelcome guest.”
Mr. Andrew Murray, in his work on the Geogra-
phical Distribution of Mammals, gives the Straits
of Magellan as the extreme southern limit of the
puma’s range, and in discussing the above passage
from Byron he writes: “ This reference, however,
gives no support to the notion of the animal alluded
to having been a puma. . . . The description of the
footprints clearly shows that the animal could not
have beena puma. None of the cat tribe leave any
trace of a claw in their footprints... . The dogs,
on the other hand, leave a very well-defined claw-
mark. . . . Commodore Byron and his party had
therefore suffered a false alarm. The creature
which had disturbed them was, doubtless, one of the
harmless domestic dogs of the natives.”
The assurance that the bold hardy adventurer
and his men suffered a false alarm, and were thrown
into a great state of excitement at the appearance of
one of the wretched domestic dogs of the Fuegians,
with which they were familiar, comes charmingly,
it must be said, from a closet naturalist, who
surveys the world of savage beasts from his London
study. He apparently forgets that Commodore
Byron lived in a time when the painful accuracy
and excessive minuteness we are accustomed to was
not expected from a writer, whenever he happened
to touch on any matters connected with zoology.
E
52 The Naturalist in La Plata.
This kind of criticism, which seizes on a slight
inaccuracy in one passage, and totally ignores an
importar.t statement in another—as, for instance,
that of the “ great beast ” seen in the woods—might
be extended to other portions of the book, and
Byron’s entire narrative made to appear as purely
a work of the imagination as Peter Wilkin’s adven-
tures in those same antarctic seas.
Mr. J. W. Boddam Whetham, in his work Across
Central America (1877), gives an anecdote of the
puma, which he heard at Sacluk, in Guatemala, and
which strangely resembles some of the stories I
have heard on the pampas. He writes: “The
following event, most extraordinary if true, is said
to have occurred in this forest to a mahogany-cutter,
who had been out marking trees. As he was re-
turning to his hut, he suddenly felt a soft body
pressing against him, and on looking down saw a
cougar, which, with tail erect, and purring like a
cat, twisted itself in and out of his legs, and glided
round him, turning up its fierce eyes as if with
laughter. Horror-stricken and with faltering steps
he kept on, and the terrible animal still circled
about, now rolling over, and now touching him with
a paw like a cat playing with a mouse. At last the
suspense became too great, and with a loud shout
he struck desperately at the creature with his axe.
It bounded on one side and crouched snarling and
showing its teeth. Just as it was about to spring,
the man’s companion, who had heard his call,
appeared in the distance, and with a growl the beast
vanished into the thick bushes.”’
Now, after allowing for exaggeration, if there is
The Puma, or Lion of America. 53
no foundation for stories of this character, it is
really a very wonderful coincidence that they should
be met with in countries so widely separated as
Patagonia and Central America, Pumas, doubtless,
are scarce in Guatemala; and, as in other places
where they have met with nothing but persecution
from man, they are shy of him; but had this adven-
ture occurred on the pampas, where they are better
known, the person concerned in it would not have
said that the puma played with him as a cat with
a mouse, but rather as a tame cat plays with a
child; nor, probably, would he have been terrified
into imagining that the animal, even after its
caresses had met with so rough a return, was about
to spring on him.
In Clavigero’s History of Lower California, it
is related that a very extraordinary state of things
was discovered to exist in that country by the first
missionaries who settled there at the end of the
seventeenth century, and which was actually owing
to the pumas. The author says that there were no
bears or tigers (jaguars); these had most probably
been driven out by their old enemies; but the
pumas had increased to a prodigious extent, so that
the whole peninsula was overrun by them; and
this was owing to the superstitious regard in which
they were held by the natives, who not only did not
kill them, but never ventured to disturb them in any
way. The Indians were actually to some extent
dependent on the puma’s success in hunting for
their subsistence ; they watched the movements of
the vultures in order to discover the spot in which
the remains of any animal it had captured had been
54 The Naturalist in La Plata.
left by the puma, and whenever the birds were seen
circling about persistently over one place, they has-
tened to take possession of the carcass, discovered in
this way. The domestic animals, imported by the
missionaries, were quickly destroyed by the virtual
masters of the country, and against these enemies
the Jesuits preached a crusade in vain: for although
the Indians readily embraced Christianity and were
baptized, they were not to be shaken in their notions
concerning the sacred Chimbicdé, as the puma was
called. The missions languished in consequence ;
the priests existed in a state of semi-starvation,
depending on provisions sent to them at long
intervals from the distant Mexican settlements ;
and for many years all their efforts to raise the
savages from their miserable condition were thrown
away. At length, in 1701, the mission of Loreto
was taken charge of by one Padre Ugarte, described
by Clavigero as a person of indomitable energy, and
ereat physical strength and courage, a true muscular
Christian, who occasionally varied his method of
instruction by administering corporal chastise-
ments to his hearers when they laughed at his
doctrines, or at the mistakes he made in their
language, while preaching to them. Ugarte, like
his predecessors, could not move the Indians to
hunt the puma, but he was a man of action, with a
wholesome belief in the efficacy of example, and his
opportunity came at last.
One day, while riding in the wood, ‘he saw ata
distance a puma walking deliberately towards
him. Alighting from his mule, he took up a large
stone and advanced to meet the animal, and when
The Puma, or Lion of America. 55
sufficiently near hurled the missile with such
precision and force that he knocked it down sense-
less. After killing it, he found that the heaviest
part of his task remained, as it was necessary for
the success of his project to carry the beast, still
warm and bleeding, to the Indian village; but
now his mule steadfastly refused to approach it.
Father Ugarte was not, however, to be defeated,
and partly by stratagem, partly by force, he
finally succeeded in getting the puma on to the
mule’s back, after which he rode in triumph to
the settlement. The Indians at first thought it
all a trick of their priest, who was so anxious to
involve them in a conflict with the pumas, and
standing at a distance they began jeering at him,
and exclaiming that he had found the animal dead.
But when they were induced to approach, and saw
that it was still warm and bleeding, they were
astonished beyond measure, and began to watch the
priest narrowly, thinking that he would presently
drop down and die in sight of them all. It was
their belief that death would quickly overtake the
slayer of a puma. As this did not happen, the
priest gained a great influence over them, and in the
end they were persuaded to turn their weapons
against the Chimbica.
Clavigero has nothing to say concerning the
origin of this Californian superstition; but with
some knowledge of the puma’s character, it is not
difficult to imagine what it may have been. No
doubt these savages had been very well acquainted
from ancient times with the animal’s instinct of
friendliness toward man, and its extreme hatred of
56 The Naturalist in La Plata.
other carnivores, which prey on the human species;
and finding it ranged on their side, as it were, in the
hard struggle of life in the desert, they were induced
to spare it, and even to regard it as a friend; and
such a feeling, among primitive men, might in the
course of time degenerate into such a superstition
as that of the Californians.
I shall, in conclusion, relate here the story of
Maldonada, which is not generally known, although
familiar to Buenos Ayreans as the story of Lady
Godiva’s ride through Coventry is to the people of
that town. The case of Maldonada is circum-
stantially narrated by Rui Diaz de Guzman, in his
history of the colonization of the Plata: he was a
person high in authority in the young colonies, and
is regarded by students of South American history
as an accurate and sober-minded chronicler of the
events of his own times. He relates that in the
year 1536 the settlers at Buenos Ayres, having
exhausted their provisions, and being compelled by
hostile Indians to keep within their pallisades, were
reduced to the verge of starvation. The Governor
Mendoza went off to seek help from the other
colonies up the river, deputing his authority to one
Captain Ruiz, who, according to all accounts, dis-
played an excessively tyrannous and _truculent
disposition while in power. The people were finally
reduced to a ration of six ounces of flour per day
for each person; but as the flour was putrid and
only made them ill, they were forced to live on any
small animals they could capture, including snakes,
frogs and toads. Some horrible details are given
by Rui Diaz, and other writers; one, Del Barco
The Puma, or Lion of America Cy
Centenera, affirms that of two thousand persons in
the town eighteen hundred perished of hunger.
During this unhappy time, beasts of prey in large
numbers were attracted to the settlement by the
efluvium of the corpses, buried just outside the
pallisades; and this made the condition of the
survivors more miserable still, since they could
venture into the neighbouring woods only at the
risk of a violent death. Nevertheless, many did so
venture, and among these was the young woman
Maldonada, who, losing herself in the forest, strayed
to a distance, and was eventually found by a party
of Indians, and carried by them to their village.
Some months later, Captain Ruiz discovered
her whereabouts, and persuaded the savages to
bring her to the settlement ; then, accusing her of
having gone to the Indian village in order to betray
the colony, he condemned her to be devoured by
wild beasts. She was taken to a wood at a dis-
tance of a league from the town, and left there, tied
to a tree, for the space of two nights and a day.
A party of soldiers then went to the spot, expecting
to find her bones picked clean by the beasts, but
were greatly astonished to find Maldonada still
alive, without hurt or scratch. She told them that
a puma had come to her aid, and had kept at her
side, defending her life against all the other beasts
that approached her. She was instantly released,
and taken back to the town, her deliverance through ©
the action of the puma probably being looked on as
a direct interposition of Providence to save her.
Rui Diaz concludes with the following paragraph,
in which he affirms that he knew the woman Mal-
58 The Naturalist in La Plata.
donada, which may be taken as proof that she
was among the few that survived the first dis-
astrous settlement and lived on to more fortunate
times: his pious pun on her name would be lost
in a translation :—“ De esta manera quedo libre la
que ofrecieron a las fieras: la cual mujer yo la
conocl, y la llamaban la Maldonada, que mas bien
se le podia llamar la Biznponapa; pues por este
suceso se ha de ver no haber merecido el castigo 4
que la ofrecieron.”
If such a thing were to happen now, in any
portion of southern South America, where the
puma’s disposition is best known, it would not be
looked on as a miracle, as it was, and that un-
avoidably, in the case of Maldonada.
CHAPTER III.
A WAVE OF LIFE.
For many years, while living in my own home on
the pampas, I kept a journal, in which all my daily
observations on the habits of animals and kindred
matters were carefully noted. Turning back to
1872-3, I find my jottings for that season contain a
history of one of those waves of life—for I can think
of no better name for the phenomenon in question
—that are of such frequent occurrence in thinly-
settled regions, though in countries like England,
geen very rarely, and on a very limited scale. An
exceptionally bounteous season, the accidental miti-
gation of a check, or other favourable circumstance,
often causes an increase so sudden and inordinate
of small prolific species, that when we actually
witness it we are no longer surprised at the notion
prevalent amongst the common people that mice,
frogs, crickets, &c., are occasionally rained down
from the clouds.
In the summer of 1872-3 we had plenty of sun-
shine, with frequent showers; so that the hot
months brought no dearth of wild flowers, as in
most years. The abundance of flowers resulted in
a wonderful increase of humble bees. I have never
known them so plentiful before; in and about the
60 The Naturalist in La Plata.
plantation adjoining my house I found, during the
season, no fewer than seventeen nests.
The season was also favourable for mice; that is,
of course, favourable for the time being, unfavour-
able in the long run, since the short-lived, undue
preponderance of a species is invariably followed
by a long period of undue depression. These pro-
lific little creatures were soon so abundant that the
dogs subsisted almost exclusively on them; the
fowls also, from incessantly pursuing and killing
them, became quite rapacious in their manner;
whilst the sulphur tyrant-birds (Pitangus) and the
Guira cuckoos preyed on nothing but mice.
The domestic cats, as they invariably do in such
plentiful seasons, absented themselves from the
house, assuming all the habits of their wild con-
geners, and slinking from the sight of man—even of
a former fireside companion—with a shy secrecy in
their motions, an apparent affectation of fear, almost
ludicrous to see. Foxes, weasels, and opossums
fared sumptuously. Even for the common armadillo
(Dasypus villosus) it was a season of affluence, for
this creature is very adroit in capturing mice. This
fact might seem surprising to anyone who marks
the uncouth figure, toothless gums, and the motions
—anything but light and graceful—of the armadillo ;
and perhaps fancying that, to be a dexterous mouser,
an animal should bear some resemblance in habits
and structure to the felide. But animals, like men,
are compelled to adapt themselves to their surround-
ings; new habits are acquired, and the exact co-
relation between habit and structure is seldom
maintained.
A Wave of Life. 61
[ kept an armadillo at this time, and good cheer
and the sedentary life he led in captivity made him
excessively fat; but the mousing exploits of even
this individual were most interesting. Occasionally
I took him into the fields to give him a taste of
liberty, though at such times I always took the
precaution to keep hold of a cord fastened to one of
his hind legs ; for as often as he came to a kennel
of one of his wild fellows, he would attempt to
escape into it. He invariably travelled with an
ungainly trotting gait, carrying his nose, beagle-
like, close to the ground. His sense of smell was
exceedingly acute, and when near his prey he
became agitated, and quickened his motions, pausing
frequently to sniff the earth, till, discovering the
exact spot where the mouse lurked, he would stop
and creep cautiously to it; then, after slowly raising
himself to a sitting posture, spring suddenly for-
wards, throwing his body like a trap over the mouse,
or nest of mice, concealed beneath the grass.
A curious instance of intelligence in a cat was
brought to my notice at this time by one of my
neighbours, a native. His children had made the
discovery that some excitement and fun was to be
had by placing a long hollow stalk of the giant
thistle with a mouse in it—and every hollow stalk
at this time had one for a tenant—before a cat, and
then watching her movements. Smelling her prey,
she would spring at one end of the stalk—the end to-
wards which the mouse would be moving at the
same time, but would catch nothing, for the mouse,
instead of running out, would turn back to run to
the other end; whereupon the cat, all excitement,
62 The Naturalist in La Plata.
would jump there to seize it; and so the contest
would continue for a long time, an exhibition of the
cleverness and the stupidity of instinct, both of the
pursuer and the pursued. There were several cats
at the house, and all acted in the same way except
one. When a stalk was placed before this cat,
instead of becoming excited like the others, it went
quickly to one end and smelt at the opening, then,
satisfied that its prey was inside, it deliberately bit
along piece out of the stalk with its teeth, then
another strip, and so on progressively, until the
entire stick had been opened up to within six or
eight inches of the further end, when the mouse
came out and was caught. Every stalk placed
before this cat was demolished in the same business-
like way; but the other cats, though they were made
to look on while the stick was being broken up by
their fellow, could never learn the trick.
In the autumn of the year countless numbers of
storks (Ciconia maguari) and of short-eared owls
(Otus brachyotus) made their appearance. They
had also come to assist at the general feast.
Remembering the opinion of Mr. E. Newman,
quoted by Darwin, that two-thirds of the humble
bees in England are annually destroyed by mice, I
determined to continue observing these insects, in
order to ascertain whether the same thing occurred
on the pampas. I carefully revisited all the nests
I had found, and was amazed at the rapid disap-
pearance of all the bees. I was quite convinced that
the mice had devoured or driven them out, for the
weather was still warm, and flowers and fruit on
which humble bees feed were very abundant,
A Wave of Life. 63
After cold weather set in the storks went away,
probably on account of the scarcity of water, for
the owls remained. So numerous were they during
the winter, that any evening after sunset I could
count forty or fifty individuals hovering over the
trees about my house. Unfortunately they did not
confine their attentions to the mice, but became de-
structive to the birdsas well. I frequently watched
them at dusk, beating about the trees and bushes
in a systematic manner, often a dozen or more of
them wheeling together about one tree, like so many
moths about a candle, and one occasionally dashing
through the branches until a pigeon—usually the
Zenaida maculata—or other bird was scared from
its perch. The instant the bird left the tree they
would all give chase, disappearing in the darkness.
[ could not endure to see the havoc they were
making amongst the ovenbirds (Furnarius rufus—a
species for which I have a regard and affection
almost superstitious), so I began to shoot the
marauders. Very soon, however, I found it was
impossible to protect my little favourites. Night
after night the owls mustered in their usual numbers,
so rapidly were the gaps I made in their ranks
refilled. I grew sick of the cruel war in which I
had so hopelessly joined, and resolved, not without
pain, to let things take their course. A singular
circumstance was that the owls began to breed in
the middle of winter. The field-labourers and boys
found many nests with eggs and young birds in
the neighbourhood. I saw one nest in July, our
coldest month, with three half-grown young birds
in it, They were excessively fat, and, though it
64 The Naturalist in La Plaia.
was noon-day, had their crops full. There were
three mice and two young cavies (Cavia australis)
lying untouched in the nest.
The short-eared owl is of a wandering disposi-
tion, and performs long journeys at all seasons of
the year in search of districts where food is abun-
dant; and perhaps these winter-breeders came
from a region where scarcity of prey, or some such
cause, had prevented them from nesting at their
usual time in summer.
The gradual increase or decrease continually
going on in many species about us is little re-
marked ; but the sudden infrequent appearance in
vast numbers of large and comparatively rare species
is regarded by most people as a very wonderful
phenomenon, not easily explained. On the pampas,
whenever grasshoppers, mice, frogs or crickets
become excessively abundant we confidently look
for the appearance of multitudes of the birds that
prey on them. However obvious may be the cause
of the first phenomenon—the sudden inordinate
increase during a favourable year of a species
always prolific—the attendant one always creates
astonishment : For how, it is asked, do these large
birds, seldom seen at other times, receive informa-
tion in the distant regions they inhabit of an abun-
dance of food in any particular locality? Years
have perhaps passed during which scarcely an indi-
vidual of these kinds has been seen: all at once
armies of the majestic white storks are seen con-
spicuously marching about the plain in all direc-
tions; while the night air resounds with the
A Wave of Life. 65
solemn hootings of innumerable owls. It is plain
that these birds have been drawn from over an
immense area to one spot; and the question is
how have they been drawn ?
Many large birds possessing great powers of
flight are, when not occupied with the business of
propagation, incessantly wandering from place to
place in search of food. They are not, as a rule,
regular migrants, for their wanderings begin and
end irrespective of seasons, and where they find
abundance they remain the whole year. They fly
at avery great height, and traverse immense dis-
tances. When the favourite food of any one of
these species is pientiful in any particular region
all the individuals that discover it remain, and
attract to them all of their kind passing overhead.
This happens on the pampas with the stork, the
short-eared owl, the hooded gull and the dominican
or black-backed gull—the leading species among
the feathered nomads: a few first appear like
harbingers; these are presently joined by new
comers in considerable numbers, and before long
they are in myriads. Inconceivable numbers of
birds are, doubtless, in these regions, continually
passing over us unseen. It was once a subject of
very great wonder to me that flocks of black-necked
swans should almost always appear flying by imme-
diately after a shower of rain, even when none had
been visible for a long time before, and when they
must have come from a very great distance. When
the reason at length occurred to me, I| felt very
much disgusted with myself for being puzzled over
so very simple a matter. After rain a flying swan
F
66 The Naturalist in La Plata.
may be visible to the eye at a vastly greater dis-
tance than during fair weather; the sun shining
on its intense white plumage against the dark back-
ground of a rain-cloud making it exceedingly con-
spicuous. The fact that swans are almost always
seen after rain shows only that they are almost
always passing.
Whenever we are visited by a dust-storm on the
pampas myriads of hooded gulls—Larus maculipen-
nis—appear flying before the dark dust-cloud, even
when not a gull has been seen for months. Dust-
storms are of rare occurrence, and come only after
a long drought, and, the water-courses being all dry,
the gulls cannot have been living in the region over
which the storm passes. Yet in seasons of drought
gulls must be continually passing by at a great
height, seeing but not seen, except when driven
together and forced towards the earth by the fury
of the storm.
By August (1873) the owls had vanished, and
they had, indeed, good cause for leaving. The
winter had been one of continued drought; the-dry
grass and herbage of the preceding year had been
consumed by the cattle and wild animals, or had
turned to dust, and with the disappearance of their
food and cover the mice had ceased to be. The
famine-stricken cats sneaked back to the house.
It was pitiful to see the little burrowing owls;
for these birds, not having the powerful wings and
prescient instincts of the vagrant Otus brachyotus,
are compelled to face the poverty from which the
others escape. Just as abundance had before made
A Wave of Life. 67
the domestic cats wild, scarcity now made the
burrowing owls tame and fearless of man. They
were so reduced as scarcely to be able to fly, and
hung about the houses all day long on the look-out
for some stray morsel of food. I have frequently
seen one alight and advance within two or three
yards of the door-step, probably attracted by tho
smell of roasted meat. The weather continued dry
until late in spring, so reducing the sheep and
cattle that incredible numbers perished during a
month of cold and rainy weather that followed the
drought.
How clearly we can see in all this that the ten-
dency to multiply rapidly, so advantageous in
normal seasons, becomes almost fatal to a species
in seasons of exceptional abundance. Cover and
food without limit enabled the mice to increase at
such an amazing rate that the lesser checks inter-
posed by predatory species were for a while in-
appreciable. But as the mice increased, so did
their enemies. Insectivorous and other species
acquired the habits of owls and weasels, preying
exclusively on them; while to this innumerable
army of residents was shortly added multitudes of
wandering birds coming from distant regions. No
sooner had the herbage perished, depriving the
little victims of cover and food, than the effects of
the war became apparent. In autumn the earth so
teemed with them that one could scarcely walk
anywhere without treading on mice; while out of
every hollow weed-stalk lying on the ground
dozens could be shaken; but so rapidly had they
been devoured by the trained army of persecutors,
68 The Naturalist in La Plata.
that in spring it was hard to find a survivor, even
in the barns and houses. The fact that species
tend to increase in a geometrical ratio makes these
great and sudden changes frequent in many regions
of the earth; but it is not often they present them-
selves so vividly as in the foregoing instance, for
here, scene after scene in one of Nature’s silent
passionless tragedies opens before us, countless
myriads of highly organized beings rising into
existence only to perish almost immediately, scarcely
a hard-pressed remnant remaining after the great
reaction to continue the species.
CHAPTER IV.
SOME CURIOUS ANIMAL WEAPONS.
Striotty speaking, the only weapons of vertebrates
are teeth, claws, horns, and spurs. Horns belong
only to the ruminants, and the spur is a rare
weapon. There are also many animals in which
teeth and claws are not suited to inflict injury, or
in which the proper instincts and courage to use
and develop them are wanted; and these would
seem to be in a very defenceless condition. De-
fenceless they are in one sense, but as a fact they
are no worse off than the well-armed species, having
either a protective colouring or a greater swiftness
or cunning to assist them in escaping from their
enemies. And there are also many of these prac-
tically toothless and clawless species which have
yet been provided with other organs and means
of offence and defence out of Nature’s curious
armoury, and concerning a few of these species I
propose to speak in this place.
Probably such distinctive weapons as horns,
spurs, tusks and spines would be much more com-
mon in nature if the conditions of life always re-
mained the same. But these things are long in
fashioning; meanwhile, conditions are changing ;
climate, soil, vegetation vary; foes and rivals
70 The Naturalist in La Plata.
diminish or increase; the old go, and others with
different weapons and a new strategy take their
place; and just as a skilful man “fighting the
wilderness”? fashions a plough from a hunting-
knife, turns his implements into weapons of war,
and for everything he possesses discovers a use
never contemplated by its maker, so does Nature
—only with an ingenuity exceeding that of man—
use the means she has to meet all contingencies,
and enable her creatures, seemingly so ill-provided,
to maintain their fight for life. Natural selection,
like an angry man, can make a weapon of any-
thing; and, using the word in this wide sense, the
mucous secretions the huanaco discharges into the
face of an adversary, and the pestilential drops
* distilled”’ by the skunk, are weapons, and may be
as effectual in defensive warfare as spines, fangs
and tushes.
I do not know of a more striking instance in the
animal kingdom of adaptation of structure to
habit than is afforded by the hairy armadillo—
Dasypus villosus. He appears to us, roughly
speaking, to resemble an ant-eater saddled with a
dish cover; yet this creature, with the cunning
which Nature has given it to supplement all de-
ficiencies, has discovered in its bony encumbrance a
highly efficient weapon of offence. Most other
edentates are diurnal and almost exclusively insec-
tivorous, some feeding only on ants; they have
unchangeable habits, very limited intelligence, and
vanish before civilization. The hairy armadillo
alone has struck out a line for itself. Like its fast
disappearing congeners, it is an insect-eater still,
Some curious Animal Weapons. 71
but does not like them seek its food on the surface
and in the ant-hill only; all kinds of insects are
preyed on, and by means of its keen scent it dis-
covers worms and larve several inches beneath
the surface. Its method of taking worms and
grubs resembles that of probing birds, for it throws
up no earth, but forces its sharp snout and wedge-
shaped head down to the required depth ; and pro-
bably while working it moves round in a circle, for
the hole is conical, though the head of the animal
is flat. Where it has found a rich hunting-ground,
the earth is seen pitted with hundreds of these neat
symmetrical bores. It is also an enemy to ground-
nesting birds, being fond of eggs and fledglings ; and
when unable to capture prey it will feed on carrion
as readily as a wild dog or vulture, returning night
after night to the carcase of a horse or cow as long
as the flesh lasts. Failing animal food, it subsists
on vegetable diet; and I have frequently found
their stomachs stuffed with clover, and, stranger
still, with the large, hard grains of the maize,
swallowed entire.
It is not, therefore, strange that at all seasons,
and even when other animals are starving, the hairy
armadillo is always fat and vigorous. In the
desert it is diurnal; but where man appears it’
becomes more and more nocturnal, and in populous
districts does not go abroad until long after dark.
Yet when a district becomes thickly settled it in-
creases in numbers; so readily does it adapt itself
to new conditions. It is not to be wondered at
that the gauchos, keen observers of nature as they
are, should make this species the hero of many of
72 The Naturalist in La Plata.
their fables of the ‘Uncle Remus” type, repre-
senting it asa versatile creature, exceedingly fertile
in expedients, and duping its sworn friend the fox
in various ways, just as “‘ Brer Rabbit” ‘serves the
fox in the North American fables.
The hairy armadillo will, doubtless, long survive
all the other armadillos, and on this account alone
it will have an ever-increasing interest for the
naturalist. I have elsewhere described how it
“a
Armadillo killing Snake,
captures mice ; when preying on snakes it proceeds
in another manner. A friend of mine, a careful
observer, who was engaged in cattle-breeding
amongst the stony sierras near Cape Corrientes, de-
scribed to me an encounter he witnessed between
an armadillo and a poisonous snake. While seated
on the hillside one day he observed a snake, about
twenty inches in length, lying coiled up on a stone
five or six yards beneath him. By-and-by, a hairy
Some curtous Animal Weapons. 73
armadillo appeared trotting directly towards it.
Apparently the snake perceived and feared its ap-
proach, for it quickly uncoiled itself and began
gliding away. Instantly the armadillo rushed on
to it, and, squatting close down, began swaying
its body backward and forward with a regular
sawing motion, thus lacerating its victim with the
sharp, deep-cut edges of its bony covering. The
snake struggled to free itself, biting savagely at its
aggressor, for its head and neck were disengaged.
Its bites made no impression, and very soon it
dropped its head, and when its enemy drew off, it
was dead and very much mangled. The armadillo
at once began its meal, taking the tail in its mouth
and slowly progressing towards the head; but when
about a third of the snake still remained it seemed
satisfied, and, leaving that portion, trotted away.
Altogether, in its rapacious and varied habits this
armadillo appears to have some points of resem-
blance with the hedgehog; and possibly, like the
little European mammal it resembles, it is not
harmed by the bite of venomous snakes.
T once had a cat that killed every snake it found,
purely for sport, since it never ate them. It would
jump nimbly round and across its victim, occasion-
ally dealing it a blow with its cruel claws. The
enemies of the snake are legion. Burrowing owls
feed largely on them; so do herons and storks,
killing them with a blow of their javelin beaks,
and swallowing them entire. The sulphur tyrant-
bird picks up the young snake by the tail, and,
flying to a branch or stone, uses it like a flail till
its life is battered out. The bird is highly com-
74 The Naturalist in La Plata.
mended in consequence, reminding one of very
ancient words : “ Happy shall he be that taketh thy
little ones and dasheth them against the stones.”
In arraying such a variety of enemies against the
snake, nature has made ample amends for having
endowed it with deadly weapons. Besides, the
power possessed by venomous snakes only seems
to us disproportionate ; it is not really so, except in
occasional individual encounters. Venomous snakes
are always greatly outnumbered by non-venomous .
ones in the same district; at any rate this is the
case on the pampas. The greater activity of the
latter counts for more in the result than the deadly
weapons of the former.
The large teguexin lizard of the pampas, called
iguana by the country people, is a notable snake-
killer. Snakes have,in fact, nomore formidable enemy,
for hejs quick to see, and swift to overtake them.
He is practically invulnerable, and deals them sudden
death with his powerful tail. The gauchos say that
dogs attacking the iguana are sometimes known to
have their legs broken, and I do not doubt it. A
‘friend of mine was out riding one day after his
cattle, and having attached one end of his lasso to
the saddle, be let it trail onthe ground. He noticed
a large iguana lying apparently asleep in the sun,
and though he rode by it very closely, it did not
stir ; but no sooner had he passed it, than it raised
its head, and fixed its attention on the forty feet of
lasso slowly trailing by. Suddenly it rushed after
the rope, and dealt it a succession of violent blows
with its tail. When the whole of the lasso, several
yards of which had been pounded in vain, had been
Sone curious Animal Weapons. "5
dragged by, the lizard, with uplifted head, continued
gazing after it with the greatest astonishment.
Never had such a wonderful snake crossed its path
before !
Molina, in his Natural History of Chili, says the
vizcacha uses its tail as a weapon ; but then Molina
is not always reliable. I have observed vizcachas
all my life, and never detected them making use of
any weapon except their chisel teeth. The tail is
certainly very curious, being straight at the base,
then curving up outwardly, and slightly down again
at the tip, resembling the spout of a china teapot.
The under surface of the straight portion of the base
is padded with a thick, naked, corneous skin ; and,
when the animal performs the curious sportive antics
in which it occasionally indulges, it gives rapid loud-
sounding blows on the ground with this part of the
tail. The peculiar form of the tail also makes it a
capital support, enabling the vizcacha to sit erect,
with ease and security.
The frog is a most timid, inoffensive creature,
saving itself, when pursued, by a series of saltatory
feats unparalleled amongst vertebrates. Conse-
quently, when I find a frog, I have no hesitation in
placing my hands upon it, and the cold sensation it
gives one is the worse result I fear. It came to
pass, however, that I once encountered a frog that
was not like other frogs, for it possessed an instinct
and weapons of offence which greatly astonished
me. I was out snipe shooting one day when,
peering into an old disused burrow, two or three
feet deep, I perceived a burly-looking frog sitting
within it. It was larger and stouter-looking than
76 The Naturalist in La Plata.
our common Rana, though like it in colour, and I
at once dropped on to my knees and set about its
capture. Though it watched me attentively, the
frog remained perfectly motionless, and this greatly
surprised me. Before I was sufficiently near to
make a grab, it sprang ‘straight at my hand, and,
catching two of my fingers round with its fore legs,
administered a hug so sudden and violent as to
cause an acute sensation of pain; then, at the very
instant [ experienced this feeling, which made me
start back quickly, it released its hold and bounded
out and away. I flew after it, and barely managed
to overtake it before it could gain the water.
Holding it firmly pressed behind the shoulders, it
was powerless to attack me, and I then noticed the
enormous development of the muscles of the fore
legs, usually small in frogs, bulging out in this
individual, like a second pair of thighs, and giving
it a strangely bold and formidable appearance. On
holding my gun within its reach, it clasped the
barrel with such energy as to bruise the skin of its
breast and legs. After allowing it to partially
exhaust itself in these fruitless huggings, I experi-
mented by letting it seize my hand again, and I
noticed that invariably after each squeeze it made a
quick, violent attempt to free itself. Believing that
I had discovered a frog differing in structure from
all known species, and possessing a strange unique
instinct of self-preservation, I carried my captive
home, intending to show it to Dr. Burmeister, the
director of the National Museum at Buenos Ayres.
Unfortunately, after I had kept it some days, it
effected its escape by pushing up the glass cover of
Some curious Animal Weapons. uy
its box, and I have never since met with another
individual like it. That this singular frog has it in
its power to seriously injure an opponent is, of
course, out of the question; but its unexpected
attack must be of great advantage. The effect of
the sudden opening of an umbrella in the face of
an angry bull gives, I think, only a faint idea of
Wrestler Frog.
the astonishment and confusion it must cause an
adversary by its leap, quick as lightning, and the
violent hug it administers ; and in the confusion it
finds time to escape. I cannot for a moment believe
that an instinct so admirable, correlated as it is
with the structure of the fore legs, can be merely
an individual variation; and I confidently expect
78 The Naturalist in La Plata.
that all I have said about my lost frog will some
day be confirmed by others. Rana luctator would
be a good name for this species.
The toad is a slow-moving creature that puts
itself in the way of persecution ; yet, strange to say,
the acrid juice it exudes. when irritated is a surer
protection to it than venomous fangs are to the
deadliest snake. Toads are, in fact, with a very
few exceptions, only attacked and devoured by
snakes, by lizards, and by their own venomous
relative, Ceratophrys ornata. Possibly the cold
sluggish natures of allthese creatures protects them
against the toad’s secretion, which would be poison
to most warm-blooded animals, but I am not so
sure that all fish enjoy a ike immunity. TI one day
noticed a good-sized fish (bagras) floating, belly
upmost, on the water. It had apparently just died,
and had such a glossy, well-nourished look about it,
and appeared so full, I was curious to know the
cause of its death. On opening it I found its
stomach quite filled with a very large toad it had
swallowed. The toad looked perfectly fresh, not
even a faint discoloration of the skin sbowing that
the gastric juices had begun to take effect ; the fish,
in fact, must have died immediately after swallowing
the toad. The country people in South America
believe that the milky secretion exuded by the toad
possesses wonderful curative properties; it is their
invariable specific for shingles—a painful, dangerous
malady common amongst them, and to cure it living
toads are applied to the inflamed part. I dare say
learned physicians would laugh at this cure, but
then, if I mistake not, the learned have in past
Some curtous Animal Weapons. 79
times laughed at other specifics used by the vulgar,
but which now have honourable places in the phar-
macopceia—pepsine, for example. More than two
centuries ago (very ancient times for South America)
the gauchos were accustomed to take the lining of
the rhea’s stomach, dried and powdered, for ailments
caused by impaired digestion ; and the remedy is
popular still. Science has gone over to them, and
the ostrich-hunter now makes a double profit, one
from the feathers, and the other from the dried
stomachs which he supplies to the chemists of
Buenos Ayres. Yet he was formerly told that to
take the stomach of the ostrich to improve his diges-
tion was as’ wild an idea as it would be to swallow
birds’ feathers in order to fly.
I just now called Ceratophrys ornata venomous,
though its teeth are not formed to inject poison
into the veins, like serpents’ teeth. It is a singular
creature, known as escuerzo in the vernacular, and
though beautiful in colour, is in form hideous beyond
description. The skin is of a rich brilliant green,
with chocolate-coloured patches, oval in form, and
symmetrically disposed. The lips are bright
yellow, the cavernous mouth pale flesh colour, the
throat and under-surface dull white. The body is
lumpy, and about the size of a large man’s fist.
The eyes, placed on the summit of a dispropor-
tionately large head, are embedded in horn-like pro-
tuberances, capable of being elevated or depressed
at pleasure. When the creature is undisturbed, the
eyes, which are of a pale gold colour, look out as
from a couple of watch towers, but when touched
on the head or menaced, the prominences sink down
80 The Naturalist in La Plata.
to a level with the head, closing the eyes completely,
and giving the creature the appearance of being
eyeless. The upper jaw is armed with minute
teeth, and there are two teeth in the centre of the
lower jaw, the remaining portions of the jaw being
armed with two exceedingly sharp-edged bony
plates. In place of a tongue, it has a round
Ceratophrys ornata.
muscular process with a rough flat disc the size of a
halfpenny.
It is common all over the pampas, ranging as far
south as the Rio Colorado in Patagonia. In the
breeding season it congregates in pools, and one is
then struck by their extraordinary vocal powers,
which they exercise by night. The performance in
no way resembles the series of percussive sounds
uttered by most batrachians. The notes it utters
Some curious Animal Weapons. 81
are long, as of a wind instrument, not unmelodious,
and so powerful as to make themselves heard dis-
tinctly a mile off on still evenings. After the
amorous period these toads retire to moist places
and sit inactive, buried just deep enough to leave
the broad green back on a level with the surface,
and it is then very difficult to detect them. In
this position they wait for their prey—frogs, toads,
birds, and small mammals. Often they capture and
attempt to swallow things too large for them, a
mistake often made by snakes. In very wet springs
they sometimes come about houses and lie in wait
for chickens and ducklings. In disposition they are
most truculent, savagely biting at anything that
comes near them; and when they bite they hang on
with the tenacity of a bulldog, poisoning the blood
with their glandular secretions. When teased, the
creature swells itself out to such an extent one
almost expects to see him burst; he follows his
tormentors about with slow awkward leaps, his
vast mouth wide open, and uttering an incessant
harsh croaking sound. A gaucho I knew was once
bitten by one. He sat down on the grass, and,
dropping his hand at his side, had it seized, and
only freed himself by using his hunting knife to
force the creature's mouth open. He washed and
bandaged the wound, and no bad result followed ;
but when the toad cannot be shaken off, then the
result is different. One summer two horses were
found dead on the plain near my home. One, while
lying down, had been seized by a fold in the skin
near the belly; the other had been grasped by the
nose while cropping grass. In both instances the
82 The Naturalist in La Plata.
vicious toad was found dead, with jaws tightly
closed, still hanging to the dead horse. Perhaps
they are sometimes incapable of letting go at will,
and, like honey bees, destroy themselves in these
savage attacks.
CHAPTER V
FEAR IN BIRDS.
Tue statement that birds instinctively fear man is
frequently met with in zoological works written
since the Origin of Species appeared ; but almost
the only reason—absolutely the only plausible
reason, all the rest being mere supposition—given
in support of such a notion is that birds in desert
islands show at first no fear of man, but afterwards,
finding him a dangerous neighbour, they become
wild ; and their young also grow up wild. It is
thus assumed that the habit acquired by the former
has become hereditary in the latter—or, at all
events, that in time it becomes hereditary. Instincts,
which are few in number in any species, and practi-
cally endure for ever, are not, presumably, acquired
with such extraordinary facility.
Birds become shy where persecuted, and the
young, even when not disturbed, learn a shy habit
from the parents, and from other adults they
associate with. JI have found small birds shyer in
desert places, where the human form was altogether
strange to them, than in thickly-settled districts.
Large birds are actually shyer than the small ones,
although to the civilized or shooting man they seem
astonishingly tame where they have never been
84 The Naturalist in La Plata.
fired at. I have frequently walked quite openly to
within twenty-five or thirty yards of a flock of
flamingoes without alarming them. This, however,
was when they were in the water, or on the opposite
side of a stream. Having no experience of guns,
they fancied themselves secure as long as a strip of
water separated them from the approaching object.
When standing on dry land they would not allow
so near an approach. Sparrows in England are
very much tamer than the sparrows I have observed
in desert places, where they seldom see a human
being. Nevertheless young sparrows in England
are very much tamer than old birds, as anyone may
see for himself. During the past summer, while
living near Kew Gardens, I watched the sparrows a
great deal, and fed forty or fifty of them every day
from a back window. The bread and seed was
thrown on to a low roof just outside the window, and
I noticed that the young birds when first able to fly
were always brought by the parents to this feeding
place, and that after two or three visits they would
begin to come of their own accord. At such times
they would venture quite close to me, showing as
little suspicion as young chickens. The adults,
however, although so much less shy than birds of
other species, were extremely suspicious, snatching
up the bread and flying away ; or, if they remained,
hopping about in a startled manner, craning their
necks to view me, and making so many gestures
and motions, and little chirps of alarm, that presently
the young would become infected with fear. The
lesson was taught them in a surprisingly short
time; their suspicion was seen to increase day by
Fear in Birds. 85
day, and about a week later they were scarcely to
be distinguished in behaviour from the adults. It
is plain that, with these little birds, fear of man is
an associate feeling, and that, unless it had been
taught them, his presence would trouble them as
little as does that of horse, sheep, or cow. But
how about the larger species, used as food, and
which have had a longer and sadder experience of
man’s destructive power ?
The rhea, or South American ostrich, philosophers
tell us, is a very ancient bird on the earth; and
from its great size and inability to escape by flight,
and its excellence as food, especially to savages,
who prefer fat rank-flavoured flesh, it must have
been systematically persecuted by man as long as,
or longer than, any bird now existing on the globe.
If fear of man ever becomes hereditary in birds,
we ought certainly to find some trace of such an
instinct in this species. I have been unable to
detect any, though I have observed scores of young
rheas in captivity, taken before the parent bird had
taught them what to fear. Ialso once kept a brood
myself, captured just after they had hatched out.
With regard to food they were almost, or perhaps
quite, independent, spending most of the time
catching flies, grasshoppers, and other insects with
surprising dexterity ; but of the dangers encom-
passing the young rhea they knew absolutely
nothing. They would follow me about as if they
took me for their parent; and, whenever I imitated
the loud snorting or rasping warning-call emitted
by the old bird in moments of danger, they would
rush to me in the greatest terror, though no animal
86 The Naturalist in La Plata.
was in sight, and, squatting at my feet, endeavour
to conceal themselves by thrusting their heads and
long necks up my trousers. Jf I had caused a
person to dress in white or yellow clothes for several
consecutive days, and had then uttered the warning
cry each time he showed himself to the birds, I
have no doubt that they would soon have acquired a
habit of running in terror from him, even without
the warning. cry, and that the fear of a person in
white or yellow would have continued all their lives.
Up to within about twenty years ago, rheas were
seldom or never shot in La Plata and Patagonia,
but were always hunted on horseback and caught
with the bolas. The sight of a mounted man would
set them off at once, while a person on foot could
walk quite openly to within easy shooting distance
of them; yet their fear of a horseman dates only
two hundred years back—a very short time, when
we consider that, before the Indian borrowed the
horse from the invader, he must have systematically
pursued the rhea on foot for centuries. The rhea
changed its habits when the hunter changed his,
and now, if an estanciero puts down ostrich hunting
on his estate, ina very few years the birds, although
wild birds still, become as fearless and familiar
as domestic animals. I have known old and ill-
tempered males to become a perfect nuisance on
some estancias, running after and attacking every
person, whether on foot or on horseback, that
ventured near them. An old instinct of a whole
race could not be thus readily lost here and there
on isolated estates wherever a proprietor chose to
protect his birds for half a dozen years.
Fear wn Birds. 87
I suppose the Talegallus—the best-known brush-
turkey—must be looked on as an exception to all
other birds with regard to the point I am con-
sidering ; for this abnormal form buries its eggs in
the huge mound made by the male, and troubles
herself no more about them. When the young is
fully developed it simply kicks the coffin to pieces
in which its mother interred it, and, burrowing its
way up to the sunshine, enters on the pleasures and
pains of an independent existence from earliest
infancy—that is, if a species born into the world in
full possession of all the wisdom of the ancients, can
be said ever to know infancy. At all events, from
Mr. Bartlett’s observations on the young hatched
in the Zoological Gardens, it appears that they took
no notice of the old birds, but lived quite indepen-
dently from the moment they came out of the ground,
even flying up into a tree and roosting separately
at night. Tam not sure, however, that these ob-
servations are quite conclusive; for it is certain
that captivity plays strange pranks with the instincts
of some species, and it is just possible that in a
state of nature the old birds exercise at first some
slight parental supervision, and, like all other
species, have a peculiar cry to warn the young of the
dangers to be avoided. If this is not so, then the
young Talegallus must fly or hide with instinctive
fear from every living thing that approaches it. I,
at any rate, find it hard to believe that it has a
knowledge, independent of experience, of the
different habits of man and kangaroo, and dis-
criminates at first sight between animals that are
dangerous to it and those that are not. This
83 The Naturalist in La Plata.
interesting point will probably never be determined,
as, most unhappily, the Australians are just now
zealously engaged in exterminating their most
wonderful bird for the sake of its miserable flesh ;
and with less excuse than the Maories could plead
with regard to the moa, since they cannot deny
that they have mutton and rabbit enough to satisfy
hunger.
Whether birds fear or have instinctive knowledge
of any of their enemies is a much larger question.
Species that run freely on the ground from the time
of quitting the shell know their proper food, and
avoid whatever is injurious. Have all young birds
a similarly discriminating instinct with regard to
their enemies? Darwin says,‘‘ Fear of any particular
enemy is certainly an instinctive quality, as may be
seen in nestling birds.” Here, even man seems to
be included among the enemies feared instinctively ;
and in another passage he says, “ Young chickens
have lost, wholly from habit, that fear of the dog
and cat which, no doubt, was originally instinctive
in them.” My own observations point to a con-
trary conclusion; and I may say that I have had
unrivalled opportunities for studying the habits of
young birds.
Animals of all classes, old and young, shrink with
instinctive fear from any strange object approaching
them. nimal the abdomen increases to
a globe as big as a medium-sized
Barcelona nut. Being silvery-grey or white in
colour, it becomes, when thus distended, very con-
spicuous on any dark surface. I have frequently
seen black, smooth-haired dogs with their coats
turned into a perfect garden of these white spider-
flowers or mushrooms. The white globe is leathery,
and nothing can injure it; and the poor beast
cannot rub, bite, or scratch it off, as it is anchored
to his flesh by eight sets of hooks and a triangle
of teeth.
The ticks inhabiting regions rich in bird and
insect life, but with few mammals, are in the same
condition as mosquitoes, as far as the supply of
blood goes; and, like the mosquitoes, they are com-
pelled and able to exist without the nourishment
Mosquitoes and Parasite Problems. 143
best suited to them. They are nature’s miserable
castaways, parasitical tribes lost in a great dry
wilderness where no blood is; and every marsh-
born mosquito, piping of the hunger gnawing its
vitals, and every forest tick, blindly feeling with its
grappling-irons for the beast that never brushes by,
seems to tell us of a world peopled with gigantic
forms, mammalian and reptilian, which once afforded
abundant pasture to the parasite, and which the
parasite perhaps assisted to overthrow.
It is almost necessary to transport oneself to the
vast tick-infested wilderness of the New World to
appreciate the full significance of a passage in Belt’s
Naturalist in Nicaragua, in which it is suggested that
man’s hairless condition was perhaps brought about
by natural selection in tropical regions, where he was
greatly troubled with parasites of this kind. It is
certain that if in such a country as Brazil he pos-
sessed a hairy coat, affording cover to the tick and
enabling it to get a footing on the body, his condi-
tion would be a very sad one. Savages abhor hairs
on the body, and even pluck them off their faces.
This seems like a survival of an ancient habit ac-
quired when the whole body was clothed with hair;
and if primitive man ever possessed such a habit,
nature only followed his lead in giving him a hair-
less offspring.
Ts it not also probable that the small amount of
mammalian life in South America, and the aquatic
habits of nearly all the large animals in the warmer
districts, is due to the persecutions of the tick?
The only way in which a large animal can rid itself
of the pest is by going into the water or wallowing
L
144 The Naturalist in La Plata.
in the mud; and this perhaps accounts for the more
or less aquatic habits of the jaguar, aguara-guazu,
the large Cervus paludosus, tapir, capybara, and
peccary. Monkeys, which are most abundant, are
a notable exception; but these animals have the
habit of attending to each other’s skins, and spend
a great deal of their time in picking off the parasites.
But how do birds escape the ticks, since these
parasites do not confine their attacks to any one
class of animals, but attach themselves impartially
to any living thing coming within reach of their
hooks, from snake to man? My own observations
bearing on this point refer less to the Ixodes than
to the minute béte-rouge, which is excessively
abundant in the Plata district, where it is known as
bicho colorado, and in size and habits resembles the
English Leptus autumnalis. It is so small that,
notwithstanding its bright scarlet colour, it can only
be discerned by bringing the eye close to it; and
being, moreover, exceedingly active and abundant
in all shady places in summer—making life a misery
to careless human beings—it must be very much
more dangerous to birds than the larger sedentary
Ixodes. The béte-rouge invariably lodges beneath
the wings of birds, where the loose scanty plumage
affords easy access to the skin. Domestic birds
suffer a great deal from its persecutions, and their
young, if allowed to run about in shady places, die
of the irritation. Wild birds, however, seem to be
very little troubled, and most of those I have exa-
mined have been almost entirely free from parasites.
Probably they are much more sensitive than the
domestic birds, and able to feel and pick off the
Mosquitoes and Parasite Problems. 145
insects with their beaks before they have penetrated
into the skin. I believe they are also able to pro-
tect themselves in another way, namely, by prevent-
ing the parasites from reaching their bodies at all.
I was out under the trees one day with a pet oven-
bird (Furnarius rufus), which had full liberty to
range about at will, and noticed that at short inter-
vals it went through the motions of picking some-
thing from its toes or legs, though I could see
nothing on them. At length I approached my eyes
to within a few inches of the bird’s feet, and dis-
covered that the large dry branch on which it stood
was covered with a multitude of parasites, all run-
ning rapidly about like foraging ants, and whenever
one came to the bird’s feet it at once ran up the leg.
Every time this happened, so far as I could see, the
bird felt it, and quickly and deftly picked it off with
the point of its bill, It seemed very astonishing
that the horny covering of the toes and legs should
be so exquisitely sensitive, for the insects are so
small and light that they cannot be felt on the hand,
even when a score of them are running over it; but
the fact is as I have stated, and it is highly probable,
I think, that most wild birds keep themselves free
from these little torments in the same way.
Some observations of mine on a species of Orni-
thomyia—a fly parasitical on birds—might possibly
be of use in considering the question of the anomalous
position in nature of insects possessing the instincts
and aptitudes of parasites, and organs manifestly
modified to suit a parasitical mode of life, yet com-
pelled and able to exist free, feeding, perhaps, on
146 The Naturalist in La Plata.
vegetable juices, or, like the ephemers, on nothing
at all. For it must be borne in mind that I do not
assert that these “ occasional” or “ accidental ”
parasites, as some one calls them, explaining no-
thing, do not feed on such juices. I do not know
what they feed on. I only know that the joyful
alacrity with which gnats and stinging flies of all
kinds abandon the leaves, supposed to afford them
pasture, to attack a warm-blooded animal, serves to
show how strong the impulse is, and how ineradicable
the instinct, which must have had an origin. Per-
haps the habits of the bird-fly I have mentioned
will serve to show how, in some cases, the free life
of some blood-sucking flies and other insects might
have originated.
Kirby and Spence, in their Jntroduction, mention
that one or two species of Ornithomyia have been
observed flying about and alighting on men; and in
one case the fly extracted blood and was caught, the
species being thus placed beyond doubt. This cir-
cumstance led the authors to believe that the insect,
when the bird it is parasitical on dies, takes to
flight and migrates from body to body, occasionally
tasting blood until, coming to the right body—to
wit, that of a bird, or of a particular species of bird
—it once more establishes itself permanently in the
plumage. I fancy that the insect sometimes leads
a freer life and ranges much more than the authors
imagined; and I refer to Kirby and Spence, with
apologies to those who regard the Introduction as
out of date, only because [am not aware that we
have any later observations on the subject.
There is in La Plata a small very common
Mosquitoes and Parasite Problems. 147
Dendrocolaptine bird—Anumbius acuticaudatus—
much infested by an Ornithomyia, a pretty, pale
insect, half the size of a house-fly, and elegantly
striped with green. It is a very large parasite for
so small a bird, yet so cunning and alert is it, and
we
Firewood-gatherer and Bird-fly.
so swiftly is it able to swim through the plumage,
that the bird is unable to rid itself of so un-
desirable a companion. The bird lives with its
mate all the year round, much of the time with its
grown-up young, in its nest—a large structure, in
148 The Naturalist in La Plata.
which so much building-material is used that the
bird is called in the vernacular Lefiatero, or Fire-
wood-gatherer. On warm bright days without
wind, during the absence of the birds, I have
frequently seen a company of from half a dozen to
a dozen or fifteen of the parasitical fly wheeling
about in the air above the nest, hovering and
gambolling together, just like house-flies in a room
in summer; but always on the appearance of the
birds, returning from their feeding-ground, they
would instantly drop down and disappear into the
nest. How curious this instinct seems! The fly
regards the bird, which affords it the warmth and
food essential to life, as its only deadly enemy ;
and with an inherited wisdom, like that of the
mosquito with regard to the dragon-fly, or of the
horse-fly with regard to the Monedula wasp,
vanishes like smoke from its presence, and only
approaches the bird secretly from a place of con-
cealment.
The parasitical habit tends inevitably to degrade
the species acquiring it, dulling its senses and
faculties, especially those of sight and locomotion ;
but the Ornithomyia seems an exception, its
dependent life having had a contrary effect ; the
extreme sensitiveness, keenness of sight, and quick-
ness of the bird having reacted on the insect,
giving it a subtlety in its habits and motions almost
without a parallel even among free insects. A
man with a blood-sucking flat-bodied flying squirrel,
concealing itself among his clothing and gliding and
dodging all over his body with so much artifice
and rapidity as to defeat all] efforts made to capture
Mosquitoes and Parasite Problems, 149
it or knock it off, would be a case parallel to that
of the bird-fly on the small bird. It might be
supposed that the Firewood-gatherer, like some
ants that keep domestic pets, makes a pet of the
fly; for it is a very pretty insect, barred with
green, and with rainbow reflections ou its wings—
and birds are believed by some theorists to possess
esthetic tastes; but the discomfort of having such
a vampire on the body would, I imagine, be too
great to allow a kindly instinct of that nature to
grow up. Moreover, I have on several occasions
seen the bird making frantic efforts to capture one
of the flies, which had incautiously flown up from
the nest at the wrong moment. Bird and fly seem
to know each other wonderfully well.
Here, then, we have a parasitical insect specialized
in the highest degree, yet retaining all its pristine
faculties unimpaired, its love of liberty, and of asso-
ciating in numbers together for sportive exercises,
and well able to take care of itself during its free in-
tervals. And probably when thrown on the world, as
when nests are blown down, or the birds get killed, or
change their quarters, as they often do, it is able to
exist for some time without avian blood. Let us then
imagine some of these orphaned colonies, unable to
find birds, but through a slight change in habits or
organization able to exist in the imago state with-
out sucking blood until they laid their eggs; and
succeeding’ generations, still better able to stand
the altered conditions of life until they become
practically independent (like gnats), multiplying
greatly, and disporting themselves in clouds over
birdless forests. yet still retaining the old hunger
150 The Naturalist x Le Pale.
for blood and the power to draw it, and ready at
any moment to return to the ancestral habit. It
might be said that if such a result were possible
it would have occurred, but that we find no insect
like the Ornithomyia existing independently. With
the bird-fly it has not occurred, as far as we know;
but in the past history of some independent para-
sites it is possible that something similar to the
imaginary case I have sketched may have taken
place. The bush-tick is a more highly specialized,
certainly a more degraded, creature than the bird-
fly, and the very fact of its existence seems to
show that it is possible for even the lowest of the
fallen race of parasites to start afresh in life under
new conditions, and to reascend in the scale of
being, although still bearing about it the marks of
former degeneracy.
The connection between the flea and the mammal
it feeds on is even less close than that which exists
between the Ornithomyia and bird. The fact that
fleas are so common and universal—for in all lands
we have them, like the poor, always with us ; and
that they are found on all mammals, from the king
of beasts to the small modest mouse—seems to show
a great amount of variability and adaptiveness, as
well as a very high antiquity. It has often been
reported that fleas have been found hopping on the
ground in desert places, where they could not have
been dropped by man or beast; and it has been
assumed that these ‘*independent”’ fleas must, like
gnats and ticks, subsist on vegetable juices. There
is no doubt that they are able to exist and propagate
Mosgurtoes and Parasite Problems, 151
for one or two years after being deprived of their
proper aliment; houses shut up for a year or
longer are sometimes found infested with them;
possibly in the absence of “ vegetable juices” they
flourish on dust. I have never detected them
hopping on the ground in uninhabited places,
although I once found them in Patagonia, in a
hamlet which had been attacked and depopulated
by the Indians about twenty months before my
visit. On entering one of the deserted huts I found
the floor literally swarming with fleas, and in less
than ten seconds my legs, to the height of my knees,
were almost black with their numbers. This proves
that they are able toincrease greatly for a period with-
out blood’; but I doubt that they can go on existing
and increasing for an indefinite time; perhaps their
true position, with regard to the parasitical habit, is
midway between that of the strict parasite which
never leaves the body, and that of independent
parasites like the Culex and the Ixodes, and all
those which are able to exist free for ever, and are
parasitical only when the opportunity offers.
Entomologists regard the flea as a degraded fly.
Certainly it is very much more degraded than the
bird-borne Ornithomyia, with its subtle motions
and instinct, its power of flight and social pastimes.
The poor pulex has lost every trace of wings;
nevertheless, in its fallen condition it has developed
some remarkable qualities and saltatory powers,
which give it a lower kind of glory ; and, compared
with another parasite with which it shares the
human species, it is almost a noble insect. Darwin
has some remarks about the smallness of the brain
152 The Naturalist in La Plata.
of an ant, assuming that this insect possesses a very
high intelligence, but I doubt very much that the ant,
which moves in a groove, is mentally the superior
of the unsocial flea. The last is certainly the most
teachabie; and if fleas were generally domesticated
and made pets of, probably there would be as many
stories about their marvellous intelligence and
fidelity to man as we now hear about our over-
praised “ friend’”’ the dog
With regard to size, the flea probably started on
its downward course as a comparatively large insect,
probably larger than the Ornithomyia. That insect
has been able to maintain its existence, without
dwindling like the Leptus into a mere speck, through
the great modification in organs and instinct, which
adapt it so beautifully to the feathery element in
which it moves. The bush-tick, wingless from the
beginning, and diverging in another direction, has
probably been greatly increased in size by its para-
sitical habit ; this seems proven by the fact, that as
long as it is parasitical on nothing it remains small,
but when able to fasten itself to an animal it rapidly
developes to a great size. Again, the big globe of
its abdomen is coriaceous and elastic, and is pro-
bably as devoid of sensation as a ball of india-rubber.
The insect, being made fast by hooks and teeth to its
victim, all efforts to remove it only increase the
pain it causes; and animals that know it well do
not attempt to rub, scratch, or bite it off, there-
fore the great size and the conspicuous colour of
the tick are positive advantages to it. The flea,
without the subtlety and highly-specialized organs
of the Ornithomyia, or the stick-fast powers and
Mosquitoes and Parasite Problems. 153
leathery body of the Ixodes, can only escape its
vigilant enemies by making itself invisible; hence
every variation, i.e. increase in jumping-power and
diminished bulk, tending towards this result, has
been taken advantage of by natural selection.
CHAPTER XI
HUMBLE-BEES AND OTHER MATTERS.
Two humble-bees, Bombus thoracicus and B. viola-
ceus, are found on the pampas; the first, with a
primrose yellow thorax, and the extremity of the
abdomen bright rufous, slightly resembles the
English B. terrestris; the rarer species, which is a
trifle smaller than the first, is of a uniform intense
black, the body having the appearance of velvet, the
wings being of a deep violaceous blue.
A census of the humble-bees in any garden or
field always shows that the yellow bees outnumber
the black in the proportion of about seven to one;
and I have also found their nests for many years
in the same proportion; about seven nests of the
yellow to one nest of the black species. In habits
they are almost identical, and when two species so
closely allied are found inhabiting the same locality,
it is only reasonable to infer that one possesses
some advantage over the other, and that the least
favoured species will eventually disappear. In this
case, where one so greatly outnumbers the other, it
might be thought that the rarer species is dying
out, or that, on the contrary, it is a new-comer
destined to supplant the older more numerous
species. Yet, during the twenty years I have ob-
fLTumble-Bees and other Matters. 155
served them, there has occurred no change in their
relative positions; though both have greatly in-
creased in numbers during that time, owing to the
spread of cultivation. And yet it would scarcely
be too much to expect some marked change in a
period so long as that, even through the slow-
working agency of natural selection; for it is not
as if there had been an exact balance of power be-
tween them. In the same period of time I have
seen several species, once common, almost or quite
disappear, while others, very low down as to
numbers, have been exalted to the first rank. In
insect life especially, these changes have been
numerous, rapid, and widespread.
In the district where, as a boy, I chased and
caught tinamous, and also chased ostriches, but
failed to catch them, the continued presence of
our two humble-bees, sucking the same flowers
and making their nests in the same situations, has
remained a puzzle to my mind.
The site of the nest is usually a slight depression
in the soil in the shelter of a cardoon bush. The
bees deepen the hollow by burrowing in the earth;
and when the spring foliage sheltering it withers
up, they construct a dome-shaped covering of small
sticks, thorns, and leaves bitten into extremely
minute pieces. They sometimes take possession of
a small hole or cavity in the ground, and save
themselves the labour of excavation.
Their architecture closely resembles that of B.
terrestris. They make rudely-shaped oval honey-
cells, varying from half an inch to an inch anda
half in length, the smaller ones being the first
156 The Naturalist in La Plata.
made; later in the season the old cocoons are
utilized for storing honey. The wax is chocolate-
coloured, and almost the only difference I can find
in the economy of the two species is that the black
bee uses a large quantity of wax in plastering the
interior of its nest. The egg-cell of the yellow bee
always contains from twelve to sixteen eggs; that
of the black bee from ten to fourteen; and the eggs
of this species are the largest though the bee is
smallest. At the entrance on the edge of the
mound one bee is usually stationed, and, when
approached, it hums a shrill challenge, and throws
itself into a menacing attitude. The sting is ex-
ceedingly painful.
One summer I was so fortunate as to discover
two nests of the two kinds within twelve yards of
each other, and I resolved to watch them very
carefully, in order to see whether the two species
ever came into collision, as sometimes happens with
ants of different species living close together.
Several times I saw a yellow bee leave its own nest
and hover round or settle on the neighbouring one,
upon which the sentinel black bee would attack and
drive it off. One day, while watching, I was de-
lighted to see a yellow bee actually enter its neigh-
bour’s nest, the sentinel being off duty. In about
five minutes’ time it came out again and flew away
unmolested. I concluded from this that humble-
bees, like their relations of the hive, occasionally
plunder each other’s sweets. On another occasion
I found a black bee dead at the entrance of the
yellow bees’ nest; doubtless this individual had
been caught in the act of stealing honey, and, after
FTumble-Bees ana other Matters. £57
it had been stung to death, it had been dragged
out and left there as a warning to others with like
felonious intentions.
There is one striking difference between the two
species. The yellow bee is inodorous; the black
bee, when angry and attacking, emits an exceed-
ingly powerful odour : curiously enough, this smell
is identical in character with that made when angry
by all the wasps of the South American genus
Pepris—dark blue wasps with red wings. This
odour at first produces a stinging sensation on the
nerve of smell, but when inhaled in large measure
becomes very nauseating. On one occasion, while
I was opening a nest, several of the bees buzzing
round my head and thrusting their stings through
the veil I wore for protection, gave out so pungent
a smell that I found it unendurable, and was com-
pelled to retreat.
It seems strange that a species armed with a
venomous sting and possessing the fierce courage.
of the humble-bee should also have this repulsive
odour for a protection. It is, in fact, as incongruous
as it would be were our soldiers provided with
guns and swords first, and after with phials of
assafoetida to be uncorked in the face of an enemy.
Why, or how, animals came to be possessed of the
power of emitting pestiferous odours is a mystery ;
we only see that natural selection has, in some
instances, chiefly among insects, taken advantage
of it to furnish some of the weaker, more unpro-
tected species with a means of escape from their
enemies. The most striking example I know is that
158 The Naturalist in La Plata.
of a large hairy caterpillar I have found on dry
wood in Patagonia, and which, when touched, emits
an intensely nauseous effuvium. Happily it is very
volatile, but while it lasts it is even more detestable
than that of the skunk.
The skunk itself offers perhaps the one instance
amongst the higher vertebrates of an animal in
which all the original instincts of self-preservation
have died out, giving place to this lower kind of
protection. All the other members of the family
it belongs to are cunning, swift of foot, and, when
overtaken, fierce-tempered and well able to defend
themselves with their powerful well-armed jaws.
For some occult reason they are provided with
a gland charged with a malodorous secretion ; and
out of this mysterious liquor Nature has elaborated
‘the skunk’s inglorious weapon. The skunk alone
when attacked makes no attempt to escape or to
defend itself by biting ; but, thrown by its agitation
into a violent convulsion, involuntarily discharges its
foetid liquor into the face of an opponent. When
this animal had once ceased to use so good a weapon
as its teeth in defending itself, degenerating at the
same time into a slow-moving creature, without fear
and without cunning, the strength and vileness of its
odour would be continually increased by the cumu-
lative process of natural selection : and how effec-
tive the protection has become is shown by the
abundance of the species throughout the whole
American continent. It is lucky for mankind—
especially for naturalists and sportsmen—that other
species have not been improved in the same direc-
tion.
FTumble-Bees and other Matters. 159
But what can we say of the common deer of the
pampas (Cervus campestris), the male of which gives
out an effuvium quite as far-reaching although not
so abominable in character as that of the Mephitis ?
It comes in disagreeable whiffs to the human
nostril when the perfumer of the wilderness is not
even in sight. Yet it is not a protection; on the
contrary, it is the reverse, and, like the dazzling
white plumage so attractive to birds of prey, a
direct disadvantage, informing all enemies for
leagues around of its whereabouts. It is not, there-
fore, strange that wherever pumas are found, deer
are never very abundant; the only wonder is that,
like the ancient horse of America, they have not
become extinct.
The gauchos of the pampas, however, give a
reason for the powerful smell of the male deer;
and, after some hesitation, I have determined to
set itdown here, for the reader to accept or reject,
as he thinks proper. I neither believe nor dis-
believe it; for although I do not put great faith
in gaucho natural history, my own observations
have not infrequently confirmed statements of
theirs, which a sceptical person would have regarded
as wild indeed. To give one instance: I heard a
gaucho relate that while out riding he had been
pursued for a considerable distance by a large
spider; his hearers laughed at him for a romancer ;
but as I myself had been attacked and pursued,
both when on foot and on horseback, by a large
wolf-spider, common on the pampas, I did not join
in the laugh. They say that the effluvium of C.
campestris is abhorrent to snakes of all kinds, just
:
160 The Naturalist in La Plata.
as pyrethrum powder is to most insects, and even
go so far as to describe its effect as fatal to them;
according to this, the smell is therefore a pro-
tection to the deer. In places where venomous
snakes are extremely abundant, asin the Sierra
district on the southern pampas of Buenos Ayres,
the gaucho frequently ties a strip of the male
deer’s skin, which retains its powerful odour for an
indefinite time, round the neck of a valuable horse
as a protection. Ii is certain that domestic animals
are frequently lost here through snake-bites. The
most common poisonous species—the Craspedo-
cephalus alternatus, called Vivora de la Cruz in the
vernacular—has neither bright colour nor warning
rattle to keep off heavy hoofs, and is moreover of
so sluggish a temperament that it will allow itself
to be trodden on before stirring, with the result
that its fangs are not infrequently struck into the
nose or foot of browsing beast. Considering, then,
the conditions in which C. campestris is placed—
and it might also be supposed that venomous snakes
have in past times been much more numerous than
they are now—it is not impossible to believe that
the powerful smell it emits has been made protec-
tive, especially when we see in other species how
repulsive odours have been turned to account by
the principle of natural selection.
After all, perhaps the wild naturalist of the
pampas knows what he is about when he ties a
strip of deer-skin to the neck of his steed and
turns him loose to graze among the snakes.
The gaucho also affirms that the deer cherishes
a wonderful animosity against snakes; that it be«
Humble-Bees and other Matters. 161
comes greatly excited when it secs one, and pro-
ceeds at once to destroy it; they say, by running
round and round it in a circle, emitting its violent
smell in larger measure, until the snake dies of
suffocation. It is hard to believe that the effect
can be so great ; but that the deer is a snake hater
and killer is certainly true: in North America,
Ceylon, and other districts deer have been observed
excitedly leaping on serpents, and killing them with
their sharp cutting hoofs.
CHAPTER XII.
A NOBLE WASP.
(Monedula punctata.)
Natoratists, like kings and emperors, have their
favourites, and as my zoological sympathies, which
are wider than my knowledge, embrace all classes
of beings, there are of course several insects for
which I have a special regard; a few in each of
the principal orders. My chief favourite among
the hymenopteras is the one representative of the
curious genus Monedula known in La Plata. It is
handsome and has original habits, but it is specially
interesting to me for another reason: I can re-
member the time when it was extremely rare on
the pampas, so rare that in boyhood the sight of
one used to be a great event to me; and I have
watched its rapid increase year by year till it has
come to be one of our commonest species. Its
singular habits and intelligence give it a still better
claim to notice. It is a big, showy, loud-buzzing
insect, with pink head and legs, wings with brown
reflections, and body encircled with alternate bands
of black and pale gold, and has a preference for
large composite flowers, on the honey of which it
feeds. Its young is, however, an insect-eater ; but
the Monedula does not, like other burrowing or
A noble Wasp. 163
sand wasps, put away a store of insects or spiders,
partially paralyzed, as a provision for the grub till
it reaches the pupa state; it actually supplies the
grub with fresh-caught insects as long as food is
required, killing the prey it captures outright, and
bringing it in to its young; so that its habits, in
this particular, are more bird- than wasp-like.
The wasp lays its solitary egg at the extremity
of a hole it excavates for itself on a bare hard piece
of ground, and many holes are usually found close
together. When the grub—for I have never been
able to find more than one in a hole—has come out
from the egg, the parent begins to bring in insects,
carefully filling up the mouth of the hole with loose
earth after every visit. Without this precaution,
which entails a vast amount of labour, I do not
believe one grub out of every fifty would survive,
so overrun are these barren spots of ground used
as breeding-places with hunting spiders, ants, and
tiger-beetles. The grub is a voracious eater, but
the diligent mother brings in as much as it can
devour. I have often found as many as six or
seven insects, apparently fresh killed, and not yet
touched by the pampered little glutton, coiled up in
the midst of them waiting for an appetite.
The Monedula is an adroit fly-catcher, for
though it kills numbers of fire-flies and other insects,
flies are always preferred, possibly because they are
so little encumbered with wings, and are also more
easily devoured. It occasionally captures insects
on the wing, but the more usual method is to
pounce down on its prey when it is at rest. At
one time, before I had learnt their habits, I used
164 The Naturalist wn La Plata.
frequently to be startled by two or three or more
of these wasps rushing towards my face, and con-
tinuing hovering before it, loudly buzzing, attending
me in my walks about the fields, The reason of
this curious proceeding is that the Monedula preys
largely on stinging flies, having learnt fram expe-
rience that the stinging fly will generally neglect
its own safety when it has once fastened on a good
spot to draw blood from. When a man or horse
stands perfectly motionless the wasps take no
notice, but the moment any movement is made of
hand, tail, or stamping hoof, they rush to the
rescue, expecting to find a stinging fly. On the
other hand, the horse has learnt to know and value
this fly-scourge, and will stand very quietly with
half a dozen loud wasps hovering in an alarming
manner close to his head, well knowing that every
fly that settles on him will be instantly snatched
away, and that the boisterous Monedula is a better
protection even than the tail—which, by the way,
the horse wears very long in Buenos Ayres.
I have, in conclusion, to relate an incident I once
witnessed, and which does not show the Monedula
in a very amiable light. I was leaning over a gate
watching one of these wasps feeding on a sun-
flower. A small leaf-cutting bee was hurrying
about with its shrill busy hum in the vicinity, and
in due time came to the sunflower and settled on
it. The Monedula became irritated, possibly at the
shrill voice and bustling manner of its neighbour,
and, after watching it for a few moments on the
flower, deliberately rushed at and drove it off.
The leaf-cutter quickly returned, however—for bees
A noble Wasp. 165
are always extremely averse to leaving a flower
unexplored—but was again driven away with threats
and demonstrations on the part of the Monedula.
The little thing went off and sunned itself on a leaf
for a time, then returned to the flower, only to be
instantly ejected again. Other attempts were made,
A Bee’s Revenge.
but the big wasp now kept a jealous watch on its
neighbour’s movements, and would not allow it to
come within several inches of the flower without
throwing itself into a threatening attitude. The
defeated bee retired to sun itself once more, appa-
rently determined to wait for the big tyrant to go
away; but the other seemed to know what was
166 The Naturalist in La Plata.
wanted, and spitefully made up its mind to stay
where it was. The leaf-cutter then gave up the
contest. Suddenly rising up into the air, it hovered,
hawk-like, above the Monedula for a moment, then
pounced down on its back, and clung there,
furiously biting, until its animosity was thoroughly
appeased; then it flew off, leaving the other
master of the field certainly, but greatly discom-
posed, and perhaps seriously injured about the
base of the wings. I was rather surprised that
they were not cut quite off, for a leaf-cutting bee .
can use its teeth as deftly as a tailor can his
shears.
Doubtless to bees, as to men, revenge is sweeter
than honey. But, in the face of mental science,
can a creature as low down in the scale of organiza-
tion as a leaf-cutting bee be credited with anything
so intelligent and emotional as deliberate anger and
revenge, “which implies the need of retaliation to
satisfy the feelings of the person (or bee) offended ?”
According to Bain (Mental and Moral Science) only
the highest animals—stags and bulls he mentions—
can be credited with the developed form of anger,
which he describes as an excitement caused by pain,
reaching the centres of activity, and containing an
impulse knowingly to inflict sufferme on another
sentient being. Here, if man only is meant, the
spark is perhaps accounted for, but not the barrel
of gunpowder. The explosive material is, however,
found in the breast of nearly every living creature.
The bull—ranking high according to Bain, though
I myself should place him nearly on a level mentally
A noble Wasp. 167
with the majority of the lower animals, both verte-
brate and insect—is capable of a wrath exceeding
that of Achilles; and yet the fact that a red rag
can manifestly have no associations, personal or
political, for the bull, shows how unintellectual
his anger must be. Another instance of mis-
directed anger in nature, not quite so familiar as
that of the bull and red rag, is used as an
illustration by one of the prophets: ‘‘ My heritage
is unto me as a speckled bird; the birds round
about are against it.” I have frequently seen the
birds of a thicket gather round some singularly
marked accidental visitor, and finally drive him
with great anger from the neighbourhood. Possibly
association comes in a little here, since any bird,
even a small one, strikingly coloured or marked,
might be looked on as a bird of prey.
The flesh-fly laying its eggs on the carrion-
flower is only a striking instance of the mistakes
all instincts are liable to, never more markedly
than in the inherited tendency to fits of frenzied
excitement: the feeling is frequently excited by
the wrong object, and cxplodes at inoppcertune
moments.
CHAPTER XIII.
NATURE'S NIGHT LIGHTS.
(Remarks about Fireflies and other matters.)
It was formerly supposed that the light of the fire-
fly (in any family possessing the luminous power)
was a safecuard against the attacks of other insects,
rapacious and nocturnal in their habits. This was
Kirby and Spence’s notion, but it might just as well
be Pliny’s for all the attention it would receive from
modern entomologists: just at present any ob-
server who lived in the pre-Darwin days is regarded
as one of the ancients. The reasons given for the
notion or theory in the celebrated Introduction to
Entomology were not conclusive; nevertheless it
was not an improbable supposition of the authors’ ;
while the theory which has taken its place in recent
zoological writings seems in every way even less
satisfactory.
Let us first examine the antiquated theory, as it
must now be called. By bringing a raptorial insect
and a firefly together, we find that the flashing light
of the latter does actually scare away the former,
and is therefore, for the moment, a protection as
effectual as the camp-fire the traveller lights in a
district abounding with beasts of prey. Notwith-
Nature's Night Lights. 169
standing this fact, and assuming that we have here
the whole reason of the existence of the light-
emitting power, a study of the firefly’s habits com-
pels us to believe that the insect would be just as
well off without the power as with it. Probably it
experiences some pleasure in emitting flashes of
light during its evening pastimes, but this could
scarcely be considered an advantage in its struggle
for existence, and it certainly does not account for
the possession of the faculty.
About the habits of Pyrophorus, the large tropical
firefly which has the seat of its luminosity on the
upper surface of the thorax, nothing definite appears
to be known; but it has been said that this instinct
is altogether nocturnal. The Pyrophorus is only
found in the sub-tropical portion of the Argentine
country, and I have never met with it. With the
widely-separated Cratomorphus, and the tortoise-
shaped Aspisoma, which emit the light from the
abdomen, I am familiar; one species of Crato-
morphus—a long slender insect with yellow wing-
cases marked with two parallel black lines—is ‘the
firefly? known to every one and excessively abun-
dant in the southern countries of La Plata. This
insect is strictly diurnal in its habits—as much so,
in fact, as diurnal butterflies. They are seen flying
about, wooing their mates, and feeding on composite
and umbelliferous flowers at all hours of the day,
and are as active as wasps during the full glare of
noon. Birds do not feed on them, owing to the
disagreeable odour, resembling that of phosphorus,
which they emit, and probably because they are
found to be uneatable; but their insect enemies are
170 The Naturalist in La Plata.
not so squeamish, and devour them readily, just as
they also do the blister-fly, which one would imagine
a morsel fitted to disagree with any stomach. One
of their enemies is the Monedula wasp; another,
a fly, of the rapacious Asilide family ; and this fly
is also a wasp in appearance, having a purple body
and bright red wings, like a Pepris, and this mimetic
resemblance doubtless serves it as a protection
against birds. A majority of raptorial insects are,
however, nocturnal, and from all these enemies that
go about under cover of night, the firefly, as Kirby
and Spence rightly conjectured, protects itself, or
rather is involuntarily protected, by means of its
frequent flashing light, We are thus forced to the
conclusion that, while the common house fly and
many other diurnal insects spend a considerable
portion of the daylight in purely sportive exercises,
the firefly, possessing in its light a protection from
nocturnal enemies, puts off its pastimes until the
evening; then, when its carnival of two or three
hours’ duration is over, retires also to rest, putting
out its candle, and so exposing itself to the dangers
which surround other diurnal species during the
hours of darkness. I have spoken of the firefly’s
pastimes advisedly, for I have really never been able
to detect it doing anything in the evening beyond
flitting aimlessly about, like house flies in a room,
hovering and revolving in company by the hour,
apparently foramusement. Thus, the more closely
we look at the facts, the more unsatisfactory does
the explanation seem. That the firefly should have
become possessed of so elaborate a machinery, pro-
ducing incidentally such splendid results, merely as
Nature's Night Lights. 171
a protection against one set of enemies for a portion
only of the period during which they are active, is
altogether incredible.
The current theory, which we owe to Belt, is a
prettier one. Certain insects (also certain Batra-
chians, reptiles, &c.) are unpalatable to the rapa-
cious kinds; it is therefore a direct advantage
to these unpalatable species to be distinguishable
from all the persecuted, and the more conspicuous
and well-known they are, the less likely are they to
be mistaken by birds, insectivorous mammals, &c.,
for eatable kinds and caught or injured. Hence we
find that many such species have acquired for their
protection very brilliant or strongly-contrasted
colours-—warning colours—which insect-eaters come
to know.
The firefly, a soft-bodied, slow-flying insect, is
easily caught and injured, but it is not fit for food,
and, therefore, says the theory, lest it should be
injured or killed by mistake, it has a fiery spark to
warn enemies—birds, bats, and rapacious insects—
that it is uneatable.
The theory of warning colours is an excellent
one, but it has been pushed too far. We have
seen that one of the most common fireflies is
diurnal in habits, or, at any rate, that it performs
all the important business of its life by day, when
it has neither bright colour nor light to warn its
bird enemies ; and out of every hundred species of
insect-eating birds at least ninety-nine are diurnal.
Raptorial insects, as I have said, feed freely on fire-
flies, so that the supposed warning is not for them,
and it would be hard to believe that the magnificent
172 The Naturalist in La Plata.
display made by luminous insects is useful only in
preventing accidental injuries to them from a few
crepuscular bats and goatsuckers. And to believe
even this we should first have to assume that bats
and goatsuckers are differently constituted from all
other creatures; for in other animals—insects, birds,
and mammalians—the appearance of fire by night
seems to confuse and frighten, but it certainly
cannot be said to warn, in the sense in which
that word is used when we speak of the brilliant
colours of some butterflies, or even of the gestures
of some venomous snakes, and of the sounds they
emit.
Thus we can see that, while the old theory of
Kirby and Spence had some facts to support it, the
one now in vogue is purely fanciful. Until some
better suggestion is made, it would perhaps be as
well to consider the luminous organ as having “ no
very close and direct relation to present habits of
life.’ About their present habits, however, especi-
ally their crepuscular habits, there is yet much to
learn. One thing I have observed in them has
always seemed very strange tome. Occasionally an
individual insect is seen shining with a very large and
steady light, or with a light which very gradually
decreases and increases in power, and at such times
it is less active than at others, remaining for long
intervals motionless on the leaves, or moving with
a very slow flight. In South America a firefly dis-
playing this abnormal splendour is said to be dying,
and it is easy to imagine how such a notion origi-
nated. The belief is, however, erroneous, for some-
times, on very rare occasions, all the insects in one
Nature’s Night Lights. 173
place are simultaneously affected in the same way,
and at such times they mass themselves together in
myriads, as if for migration, or for some other great
purpose. Mr. Bigg-Wither, in South Brazil, and
D’Albertis, in New Guinea, noticed these firefly
gatherings; I also once had the rare good fortune
to witness a phenomenon of the kind on a very grand
scale. Riding on the pampas one dark evening an
hour after sunset, and passing from high ground
overgrown with giant thistles to a low plain covered
with long grass, bordering a stream of water, I
found it all ablaze with myriads of fireflies. I
noticed that all the insects gave out an exceptionally
large, brilliant light, which shone almost steadily.
The long grass was thickly studded with them,
while they literally swarmed in the air, all moving
up the valley with a singularly slow and languid
flight. When I galloped down into this river of
phosphorescent fire, my horse plunged and snorted
with alarm. I succeeded at length in quieting him,
and then rode slowly through, compelled to keep
my mouth and eyes closed, so thickly did the insects
rain on to my face. The air was laden with the
sickening phosphorous smell they emit, but when I
had once got free of the broad fiery zone, stretching
away on either hand for miles along the moist valley,
I stood still and gazed back for some time on a scene
the most wonderful and enchanting I have ever
witnessed.
The fascinating and confusing effect which the
appearance of fire at night has on animals is a most
174 The Naturalist iu La Plata.
interesting subject; and although it is not pro-
bable that anything very fresh remains to be said
about it, I am tempted to add here the results of
my own experience.
When travelling by night, I have frequently
been struck with the behaviour of my horse at the
sight of natural fire, or appearance of fire, always
so different from that caused by the sight of fire
artificially created. The steady gleam from the
open window or door of a distant house, or even
the unsteady wind-tossed flame of some lonely
camp-fire, has only served to rouse a fresh spirit in
him and the desire to reach it; whereas those in-
frequent displays of fire which nature exhibits, such
as lightning, or the ignis fatuus, or even a cloud of
fireflies, has always produced a disquieting effect.
Experience has evidently taught the domestic horse
to distinguish a light kindled by man from all
others; and, knowing its character, he is just as
‘ well able as his rider to go towards it without ex-
periencing that confusion of mind caused by a glare
in the darkness, the origin and nature of which is
a mystery. The artificially-lighted fire is to the
horse only the possible goal of the journey, and is
associated with the thought of rest and food. Wild
animals, as a rule, at any rate in thinly-settled
districts, do not know the meaning of any fire; it
only excites curiosity and fear in them; and they
are most disturbed at the sight of fires made by
man, which are brighter and steadier than most
natural fires. We can understand this sensation
in animals, since we ourselves experience a similar
one (although in a less degree and not associated
Nature's Night Lights. £75
with fear) in the effect which mere brightness has
on us, both by day and nicht.
On riding across the monotonous grey Patagonian
uplands, where often for hours one sees not the
faintest tinge of bright colour, the intense glowing
crimson of a cactus-frnit, or the broad shining
white bosom of the Patagonian eagle-buzzard
(Buteo erythronotus), perched on the summit of a
distant bush, has had a strangely fascinating effect
on me, so that I have been unable to take my eyes
off it as long as it continued before me. Or in
passing through extensive desolate marshes, the
dazzling white plumage of a stationary egret has
exercised the same attraction. At night we ex-
perience the sensation in a greater degree, when the
silver sheen of the moon makes a broad path on
the water; or when a meteor leaves a glowing
track across the sky; while a still more familiar
instance is seen in the powerful attraction on the
sight of glowing embers in a darkened room. The
mere brightness, or vividness of the contrast,
fascinates the mind; but the effect on man is
comparatively weak, owing to his fiery education
aud to his familiarity with brilliant dyes artificially
obtained from nature. How strong this attraction
of mere brightness, even where there is no mystery
about it, is to wild animals is shown by birds of
prey almost invariably singling out white or bright-
plumaged birds for attack where bright and sober-
coloured kinds are mingled together. By night the
attraction is immeasurably greater than by day,
and the light of a fire steadily gazed at quickly
confuses the mind. The fires which travellers make
N
176 The Naturalist in La Plata.
for their protection actually serve to attract the
beasts of prey, but the confusion and fear caused by
the bright glare makes it safe for the traveller to
lie down and sleep in the light. Mammals do not
lose their heads altogether, because they are walking
on firm ground where muscular exertion and an
exercise of judgment are necessary at every step ;
whereas birds floating buoyantly and with little
effort through the air are quickly bewildered.
Incredible numbers of migratory birds kill them-
selves by dashing against the windows of light-
houses; on bright moonlight nights the voyagers
are comparatively safe; but during dark cloudy
weather the slaughter is very great; over six
hundred birds were killed by striking a lighthouse
in Central America in a single night. On insects
the effect is the same as on the higher animals: on
the ground they are attracted by the light, but
keep, like wolves and tigers, at a safe distance
from it; when rushing through the air and unable
to keep their eyes from it they fly into it, or else
revolve about it, until, coming too close, their
wings are singed.
I find that when I am on horseback, going at a
swinging gallop, a bright light affects me far more
powerfully than when I am trudging along on foot.
A person mounted on a bicycle and speeding over
a level plain on a dark night, with nothing to guide
him except the idea of the direction in his mind,
would be to some extent in the position of the
migratory bird. An exceptionally brilliant ignis
fatuus flying before him would affect him as the
gleam of a lamp placed high above the surface
Nature's Night Lights. 177
affects the migrants: he would not be able to keep
his eyes from it, but would quickly lose the sense
of direction, and probably end his career much as
the bird does, by breaking his machine and perhaps
his bones against some unseen obstruction in the
way.
CHAPTER XIV.
FACTS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT SPIDERS.
Sou time ago, while turning over a quantity of
rubbish in a little-used room, I disturbed a large
black spider. Rushing forth, just in time to save
itself from destruction through the capsizing of a
pile of books, it paused for one moment, took a
swift comprehensive glance at the position, then
scuttled away across the floor, and was lost in an
obscure corner of the room. This incident served
to remind me of a fact I was nearly forgetting, that
England is not a spiderless country. A foreigner,
however intelligent, coming from warmer regions,
might very easily make that mistake. In Buenos
Ayres, the land of my nativity, earth teems with
these interesting little creatures. They abound in
and on the water, they swarm in the grass and
herbage, which everywhere glistens with the silvery
veil they spin over it. Indeed it is scarcely an
exaggeration to say that there is an atmosphere of
spiders, for they are always floating about invisible
in the air; their filmy threads are unfelt when they
fly against you; and uften enough you are not even
aware of the little arrested aeronaut hurrying over
your face with feet lighter than the lightest thistle-
down.
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 179
It is somewhat strange that although, where
other tribes of living creatures are concerned, I am
something of a naturalist, spiders I have always
observed and admired in a non-scientific spirit, and
this must be my excuse for mentioning the habits
of some spiders without giving their specific names
—an omission always vexing to the severely-techni-
cal naturalist. They have ministered to the love of
the beautiful, the grotesque, and the marvellous in
me; but I have never collected a spider, and if I
wished to preserve one should not know how to do
it. Ihave been “familiar with the face” of these
monsters so long that I have even learnt to love
them; and I believe that if Emerson rightly predicts
that spiders are amongst the things to be expelled
from earth by the perfected man of the future, then
a great charm and element of interest will be lost
to nature. Though loving them, I cannot, of
course, feel the same degree of affection towards all
the members of so various a family. The fairy
gossamer, scarce seen, a creature of wind and sun-
shine; the gem-like Epeira in the centre of its
starry web; even the terrestrial Salticus, with its
puma-like strategy, certainly appeal more to our
esthetic feelings than does the slow heavy Mygale,
looking at a distance of twenty yards away, as he
approaches you, like a gigantic cockroach mounted
on stilts. ‘The rash fury with which the female
wolf-spider defends her young is very admirable ;
but the admiration she excites is mingled with other
feelings when we remember that the brave mother
proves to her consort a cruel and cannibal spouse.
Possibly my affection for spiders is due in a great
180 The Naturalist in La Plata.
measure to the compassion I have always felt for
them. Pity, ’tis said, is akin to love; and who can
help experiencing that tender emotion that considers
the heavy affliction nature has Jaid on the spiders
in compensation for the paltry drop of venom with
which she, unasked, endowed them! And here, of
course, I am alluding to the wasps. These insects,
with a refinement of cruelty, prefer not to kill their
victims outright, but merely maim them, then house
them in cells where the grubs can vivisect them at
leisure. This is one of those revolting facts the
fastidious soul cannot escape from in warm climates ;
for in and out of open windows and doors, all day
long, all the summer through, comes the busy
beautiful mason-wasp. A long body, wonderfully
slim at the waist, bright yellow legs and thorax,
and a dark crimson abdomen,—what object can be
prettier to look at? But in her life this wasp is
not beautiful. At home in summer they were the
pests of my life, for nothing would serve to keep
them out. One day, while we were seated at dinner,
a clay nest, which a wasp had succeeded in complet-
ing unobserved, detached itself from the ceiling and
fell with a crash on to the table, where it was
shattered to pieces, scattering a shower of green
half-living spiders round it. I shall never forget
the feeling of intense repugnance I experienced at
the sight, coupled with detestation of the pretty
but cruel little architect. There is, amongst our
wasps, even a more accomplished spider-scourge
than the mason-wasp, and I will here give a brief
account of its habits. On the grassy pampas, dry
bare spots of soil are resorted to by a class of
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 181
spiders that either make or take little holes in the
ground to reside in, and from which they rush forth
to seize their prey. They also frequently sit inside
their dens and patiently wait there for the intrusion
of some bungling insect. Now, in summer, to a
dry spot of ground like this, comes a small wasp,
scarcely longer than a blue-bottle fly, body and
wings of a deep shining purplish blue colour, with
only a white mark like a collar on the thorax. It
flirts its blue wings, hurrying about here and there,
and is extremely active, and of a slender graceful
figure—the type of an assassin. It visits and
explores every crack and hole in the ground, and,
if you watch it attentively, you will at length see
it, on arriving at a hole, give a little start back-
wards. It knows that a spider lies concealed
within. Presently, having apparently matured a
plan of attack, it disappears into the hole and
remains there for some time. Then, just when you
are beginning to think that the little blue explorer
has been trapped, out it rushes, flying in terror,
apparently, from the spider who issues close behind
in hot pursuit; but, before they are three inches
away from the hole, quick as lightning the wasp
turns on its follower, and the two become locked
together in a deadly embrace. Looking like one
insect, they spin rapidly round for a few moments,
then up springs the wasp —victorious. The
wretched victim is not dead; its legs move a
little, but its soft body is paralyzed, and lies
collapsed, flabby, and powerless as a stranded jelly-
fish. And this is the invariable result of every
such conflict. In other classes of beings, even the
182 The Naturalist in La Plata.
weakest hunted thing occasionally succeeds in
inflicting pain on its persecutor, and the small
trembling mouse, unable to save itself, can sometimes
make the cat shriek with pain; but there is no weak
spot in the wasp’s armour, no fatal error of judg-
ment, not even an accident, ever to save the
wretched victim from its fate. And now comes the
most iniquitous part of the proceeding. When the
wasp has sufficiently rested after the struggle, it
deliberately drags the disabled spider back into its
own hole, and, having packed it away at the
extremity, lays an egg alongside of it, then, coming
out again, gathers dust and rubbish with which it
fills up and obliterates the hole; and, having thus
concluded its Machiavellian task, it flies cheerfully
off in quest of another victim,
The extensive Epeira family supply the mason-
wasps and other spider-killers with the majority of
their victims. These spiders have soft, plump,
succulent bodies like pats of butter; they inhabit
trees and bushes chiefly, where their geometric webs
betray their whereabouts; they are timid, com-
paratively innocuous, and reluctant to quit the
shelter of their green bower, made of a rolled-up
leaf; so that there are many reasons why they
should be persecuted. They exhibit a great variety
of curious forms; many are also very richly coloured;
but even their brightest hues—orange, silver, scarlet
—have not been given without regard to the colour-
ing of their surroundings. Green-leafed bushes are
frequented by vividly green Epeiras, but the imita-
tive resemblance does not quite end here. The
green spider’s method of escape, when the bush is
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 183
roughly shaken, 1s to drop itself down on the earth,
where it lies simulating death. In falling, it drops
just as a green leaf would drop, that is, not quite so
rapidly as a round, solid body like a beetle or
spider. Now in the bushes there is another Epeira,
in size and form like the last, but differing in colour;
for instead of a vivid green, it is of a faded yellowish
white—the exact hue of a dead, dried-up leaf. This
spider, when it lets itself drop—for it has the same
protective habit as the other—falls not so rapidly
as a green freshly broken off leaf or as the green
spider would fall, but with a slower motion, precisely
like a leaf withered up till it has become almost
light as a feather. It is not difficult to imagine how
this comes about: either a thicker line, or a greater
stiffness or tenacity of the viscid fluid composing
the web and attached to the point the spider drops
from, causes one to fall slower than the other. But
how many tentative variations in the stiffness of the
web material must there have been before the precise
degree was attained enabling the two distinct species,
differing in colour, to complete their resemblance to
falling leaves—a fresh green leaf in one case and a
dead, withered leaf in the other !
The Tetragnatha—a genus of the Epeira family,
and known also in England—are small spiders
found on the margin of streams. Their bodies are
slender, oblong, and resembling a canoe in shape ;
and when they sit lengthwise on a stem or blade of
grass, their long, hair-like legs arranged straight
before and behind them, it is difficult to detect
them, so closely do they resemble a discoloured
stripe on the herbage. A species of Tetragnatha
184 The Naturalist in La Plata.
with a curious modification of structure abounds on
the pampas. The long leg of this spider is no
thicker than a bristle from a pig’s back, but at the
extremity it is flattened and broad, giving it a
striking resemblance to an oar. These spiders are
only found in herbage overhanging the borders of
streams: they are very numerous, and, having a
pugnacious temper, are incessantly quarrelling ; and
it frequently happens that in these encounters, or
where they are pursuing each other through the
leaves, they drop into the water below. I believe,
in fact, that they often drop themselves purposely
into it as the readiest means of escape when hard
pressed. When this happens, the advantage of the
modified structure of the legs is seen. The fallen
spider, sitting boat-like on the surface, throws out
its long legs, and, dipping the broad ends into the
water, literally rows itself rapidly to land.
The gossamer-spider, most spiritual ofliving things,
of which there are numerous species, some extremely
beautiful in colouring and markings, is the most
namerous of our spiders. Only when the declining
sun flings a broad track of shiny silver light on the
plain does one get some faint conception of the un-
numbered millions of these buoyant little creatures
busy weaving their gauzy veil over the earth and
floating unseen, like an ethereal vital dust, in the
atmosphere.
This spider carries within its diminutive abdomen
a secret which will possibly serve to vex subtle
intellects for a long time to come; for it is hard
to believe that merely by mechanical force, even aided
by currents of air, a creature half as big as a barley
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 185
grain can instantaneously shoot out filaments twenty
or thirty inches long, and by means of which it
floats itself in the air.
Naturalists are now giving a great deal of atten-
tion to the migrations of birds in diiferent parts of
the world: might not insect and spider migrations
be included with advantage to science in their ob-
servations? The common notion is that the
gossamer makes use of its unique method of locomo-
tion only to shift its quarters, impelled by want of
food or unfavourable conditions—perhaps only by
a roving disposition. I believe that besides these
incessant flittings about from place to place
throughout the summer the gossamer-spiders have
great periodical migrations which are, as a rule, in-
visible, since a single floating web cannot be re-
marked, and each individual rises and floats away
by itself from its own locality when influenced by
the instinct. When great numbers of spiders rise
up simultaneously over a large area, then, some-
times, the movement forces itself on our attention ;
for at such times the whole sky may be filled with
visible masses of floating web. All the great move-
ments of gossamers I have observed have occurred
in the autumn, or, at any rate, several weeks after
the summer solstice; and, like the migrations of
birds at the same season of the year, have been in
a northerly direction. I do not assert or believe
that the migratory instinct in the gossamer is uni-
versal. In a moist island, like England, for
instance, where the condition of the atmosphere is
seldom favourable, and where the little voyagers
would often be blown by adverse winds to perish
186 The Naturalist in La Plata.
far out at sea, it is difficult to believe that such
migrations take place. But where they inhabit a
vast area of land, as in South America, extending
without interruption from the equator to the cold
Magellanic regions, and where there is a long
autumn of dry, hot weather, then such an instinct
as migration might have been developed. For this
is not a faculty merely of a few birds: the impulse
to migrate at certain seasons affects birds, insects,
and even mammals. In a few birds only is it
highly developed, but the elementary feeling, out of
which the wonderful habit of the swallow has
grown, exists widely throughout animated nature.
On the continent of Europe it also seems probable
that a great autumnal movement of these spiders
takes place; although, I must confess, I have no
grounds for this statement, except that the fluating
gossamer is called in Germany ‘‘ Der fliegender
Summer ’’—the flying or departing summer.
I have stated that all migrations of gossamers I
have witnessed have been in the autumn; except-
ing in one instance, these flights occurred when the
weather was still hot and dry. The exceptionally
late migration was on March 22—a full month after
the departure of martins, humming-birds, fly-
catchers, and most other true bird-migrants. It
struck me as being so remarkable, and seems to
lend so much force to the idea I have suggested,
that [ wish to give here an exact copy of the entries
made at the time and on the spot in my notebook.
“March 22. This afternoon, while I was out
shooting, the gossamer-spiders presented an ap-
pearance quite new to me. Walking along astream
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 187
(the Conchitas, near Buenos Ayres), I noticed a
broad white line skirting the low wet ground. This
I found was caused by gossamer web lying in such
quantities over the earth as almost to hide the grass
and thistles under it. The white zone was about
twenty yards wide, and outside it only a few
scattered webs were visible on the grass; its exact
length I did not ascertain, but followed it for about
two miles without finding the end. The spiders
were So numerous that they continually baulked
one another in their efforts to rise in the air. As
soon as one threw out its lines they would become
entangled with those of another spider, lanced out
at the same moment; both spiders would imme-
diately seem to know the cause of the trouble, for
as soon as their lines fouled they would rush
angrily towards each other, each trying to drive
the other from the elevation. Notwithstanding
these difficulties, numbers were continually floating
off on the breeze which blew from the south.
“IT noticed three distinct species: one with a
round scarlet body; another, velvet black, with
large square cephalothorax and small pointed abdo-
men; the third and most abundant kind were of
different shades of olive green, and varied greatly
in size, the largest being fully a quarter of an inch
in leneth. Apparently these spiders had been
driven up from the low ground along the stream
where it was wet, and had congregated along the
borders of the dry ground in readiness to migrate.
‘95th. Went again to visit the spiders, scarcely
expecting to find them, as, since first seeing them,
we have had much wind and rain. To my surprise
188 The Naturalist in La Plata.
I found them in greatly increased numbers: on the
tops of cardoons, posts, and other elevated situa-
tions they were literally lying together in heaps.
Most of them were large and of the olive-coloured
species; their size had probably prevented them
from getting away earlier, but they were now float-
ing offin great numbers, the weather being calm
and tolerably dry. To-day I noticed a new species
with a grey body, elegantly striped with black, and
pink legs—a very pretty spider.
26th. Went again to-day and found that the
whole vast army of gossamers, with the exception
of a few stragglers sitting on posts and dry stalks,
had vanished. They had taken advantage of tie
short spell of fine weather we are now having, after
an unusually wet and boisterous autumn, to make
their escape.”
Here it seemed to me that a conjunction of cir-
cumstances—first, the unfavourable season prevent-
ing migration at the proper time, and secondly, the
strip of valley out of which the spiders had been
driven to the higher ground till they were massed
together —only served to make visible and evident
that a vast annual migration takes place which we
have only to look closely for to discover.
One of the most original spiders iu Buenos Ayres
—mentally original, I mean—is a species of
Pholeus; a quiet, inoffensive creature found in
houses, and so abundant that they literally swarm
where they are not frequently swept away from
ceilings and obscure corners. Certainly it seems a
poor spider after the dynamical and migratory
gossamer ; but it happens, curiously enough, that a
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders, 189
study of the habits of this dusty domestic creature
leads us incidentally into the realms of fable and
romance. It is remarkable for the extreme length
of its legs, and resembles in colour and general ap-
pearance a crane fly, but is double the size of that
insect. It has a singular method of protecting
itself: when attacked or approached even, gathering
its feet together and fastening them to the centre
of its web, it swings itself round and round with
the velocity of a whirligig, so that it appears like a
mist on the web, offering no point for an enemy to
strike at. When a fly is captured the spider
approaches it cautiously and spins a web round it,
continually narrowing the circle it describes, until
the victim is inclosed in a cocoon-like covering.
This is a common method with spiders; but the
intelligence—for I can call it by no other word—of
the Pholcus has supplemented this instinctive pro-
cedure with a very curious and unique habit. The
Pholcus, in spite of its size, is a weak creature,
possessing little venom to despatch its prey with,
so that it makes a long and laborious task of killing
a fly. A fly when caught in a web is a noisy crea-
ture, and it thus happens that when the Daddy-
longlegs—as Anglo-Argentines have dubbed this
species—succeeds in snaring a captive the shrill
outrageous cries of the victim are heard for a long
time—often for ten or twelve minutes. This noise
greatly excites other spiders in the vicinity, and
presently they are seen quitting their webs and
hurrying to the scene of conflict. Sometimes the
captor is driven off, and then the strongest or most
daring spider carries away the fly. But where a
190 The Naturalist in La Plata,
large colony are allowed to continue for a long
time in undisturbed possession of a ceiling, when
one has caught a fly he proceeds rapidly to throw a
covering of web over it, then, cutting it away, drops
it down and lets it hang suspended by a line at a
distance of two or three feet from the ceiling. The
other spiders arrive on the scene, and after a short
investigation retreat to their own webs, and when
the coast is clear our spider proceeds to draw up
the captive fly, which is by this time exhausted
with its struggles.
Now, I have repeatedly remarked that all spiders,
when the shrill humming of an insect caught in a
web is heard near them, become agitated, like the
Pholeus, and will, in the same way, quit their own
webs and hurry to the point. the sound proceeds
from. This fact convinced me many years ago that
spiders are attracted by the sound of musical in-
struments, such as violins, concertinas, guitars, &c.,
simply because the sound produces the same effect
on them as the shrill buzzing of a captive fly. I
have frequently seen spiders come down walls or
from ceilings, attracted by the sound of a guitar,
softly played; and by gently touching metal strings,
stretched on a piece of wood, I have succeeded in
attracting spiders on to the strings, within two or
three inches of my fingers; and I always noticed
that the spiders seemed to be eagerly searching for
something which they evidently expected to find
there, moving about in an excited manner and look-
ing very hungry and fierce. I have no doubt that
Pelisson’s historical spider in the Bastille came
down in a moodand with a manner just as ferocious
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 19!
when the prisoner called it with musical sounds to
be fed.
The spiders I have spoken of up till now. are
timid, inoffensive creatures, chiefly of the Hpeira
family; but there are many others exceedingly
high-spirited and, like some of the most touchy
hymenopteras, always prepared to ‘‘greatly quarrel ”’
over matters of little moment. The Mygales, of
“tn
OF alt —
Mygale fusca, threatening.
which we have several species, are not to be treated
with contempt. One is extremely abundant on the
pampas, the Mygale fusca, a veritable monster,
covered with dark brown hair, and called in the
vernacular aranea peluda—hairy spider. In the
hot month of December these spiders take to roam-
ing about on the open plain, and are then every-
where seen travelling in a straight line with a slow
16)
192 The Naturalist in La Plata.
even pace. They are very great in attitudes, and
when one is approached it immediately throws itself
back, like a pugilist preparing for an encounter,
and stands up so erect on its four hind feet tuat the
under surface of its body is displayed. Humble-
bees are commonly supposed to carry the palm in
attitudinizing; and it is wonderful to see the
grotesque motions of these irascible insects when
their nest is approached, elevating their abdomens
and two or three legs at a time, so that they re-
semble a troupe of acrobats balancing themselves
on their heads or hands, and kicking their legs
about in the air. And to impress the intruder with
the dangerous significance of this display they hum
a shrill warning or challenge, and stab at the air
with their naked stings, from which limpid drops of
venom are seen to exude. These threatening
gestures probably have an effect. In the case of
the hairy spider, I do not think any creature, how-
ever stupid, could mistake its meaning when it
stands suddenly up, a figure horribly grotesque ;
then, dropping down on all eights, charges violently
forwards. Their long, shiny black, sickle-shaped
falces are dangerous weapons. I knew a native
woman who had been bitten on the leg, and who,
after fourteen years, still suffered at intervals acute
pains in the limb.
The king of the spiders on the pampas is, how-
ever, not a Mygale, but a Lycosa of extraordinary
size, light grey in colour, with a black ring round
its middle. It is active and swift, and irritable to
such a degree that one can scarcely help thinking
that in this species nature has overshot her mark,
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 193
When a person passes near one—say, within three
or four yards of its lurking-place—it starts up and
gives chase, and will often follow for a distance of
thirty or forty yards. I came once very nearly
being bitten by one of these savage creatures.
Riding at an easy trot over the dry grass, I suddenly
observed a spider pursuing me, leaping swiftly along
and keeping up with my beast. I aimed a blow
with my whip, and the point of the lash struck the
ground close to it, when it instantly leaped upon
and ran up the lash, and was actually within three
or four inches of my hand when I flung the whip
from me.
The gauchos havea very quaint ballad which tells
that the city of Cordova was once invaded by an
army of monstrous spiders, and that the towns-
people went out with beating drums and flags flying
to repel the invasion, and that after firing several
volleys they were forced to turn and fly for their
lives. I have no doubt that a sudden great increase
of the man-chasing spiders, in a year exceptionally
favourable to them, suggested this fable to some
rhyming satirist of the town.
In conclusion of this part of my subject, I will
describe a single combat of a very terrible nature
I once witnessed between two little spiders belong-
ing to the same species. One had a small web
against a wall, and of this web the other coveted
possession. After vainly trying by a series of
strategic movements to drive out the lawful owner,
it rushed on to the web, and the two envenomed
little duellists closed in mortal combat. They did
nothing so vulgar and natural as to make use of
194 The Naturalist in La Plata.
their falces, and never once actually touched each
other, but the fight was none the less deadly.
Rapidly revolving about, or leaping over, or passing
under, each other, each endeavoured to impede or
entangle his adversary, and the dexterity with
which each avoided the cunningly thrown snare,
trying at the same time to entangle its opponent,
was wonderful to see. At length, after this equal
battle had raged for some time, one of the com-
batants made some fatal mistake, and for a moment
there occurred a break in his motions; instantly
the other perceived his advantage, and began leap-
ing backwards and forwards across his struggling
adversary with such rapidity as to confuse the sight,
producing the appearance of two spiders attacking
a third one lying between them. He then changed
his tactics, and began revolving round and round
his prisoner, and very soon the poor vanquished
wretch—the aggressor, let us hope, in the interests
of justice—was closely wrapped in a silvery cocoon,
which, unlike the cocoon the caterpillar weaves for
itself, was also its winding-sheet.
In the foregoing pages I have thrown together
some of the most salient facts I have noted ; but
the spider-world still remains to me a wonderland
of which IT know comparatively nothing. Nor is
any very intimate knowledge of spiders to be got
from books, though numberless lists of new species
are constantly being printed ; for they have not yet
had, like the social bees and ants, many loving and
patient chroniclers of their ways. The Hubers and
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 195
Lubbocks have been many; the Moggridges few.
But even a very slight study of these most versatile
and accomplished of nature’s children gives rise to
some interesting reflections. One fact that strikes
the mind very forcibly is the world-wide distribu-
tion of groups of species possessing highly developed
instincts. One is the zebra-striped Salticus, with its
unique strategy—that is to say, unique amongst
spiders. It is said that the Australian savage
approaches a kangaroo in the open by getting up in
sight of its prey and standing perfectly motionless
till he is regarded as an inanimate object, and every
time the animal’s attention wanders advancing a
step or two until sufficiently near to hurl his spear.
The Salticus approaches a fly in the same manner,
till near enough to make its spring. Another is
the Trapdoor spider. Another the Dolomedes, that
runs over the surface of the water in pursuit of its
prey, and dives down to escape from its enemies ;
and, strangest of all, the Argyroneta, that has its
luminous dwelling at the bottom of streams; and
just as a mason carries bricks and mortar to its
building, so does this spider carry down bubbles of
air from the surface to enlarge its mysterious house,
in which it lays its eggs and rears its young. Oom-
munity of descent must be supposed of species
having such curious and complex instincts; but
how came these feeble creatures, unable to transport
themselves over seas and continents like the aérial
gossamer, to be so widely distributed, and inhabiting
regions with such different conditions? This can
only be attributed to the enormous antiquity of the
species, and of this antiquity the earliness in which
196 The Naturalist in La Plata.
the instinct manifests itself in the young spiders
is taken as evidence.
A more important matter, the intelligence of
spiders, has not yet received tne attention it deserves.
The question of insect intelligence—naturalists are
agreed that insects do possess intelligence—is an
extremely difficult one ; probably some of our con-
clusions on this matter will have to be reconsidered.
For instance, we regard the Order Hymenoptera as
the most intelligent because most of the social
insects are included in it; but it has not yet been
proved, probably never will be proved, that the
social instincts resulted from intelligence which has
“lapsed.” Whether ants and bees were more intel-
ligent than other insects during the early stages of
their organic societies or not, it will hardly be dis-
puted by any naturalist who has observed insects
for long that many solitary species display more
intelligence in their actions than those that live in
communities.
The nature of the spider’s food and the diffi-
culties in the way of providing for their wants
impose on them a life of solitude: hunger, perpetual
watchfulness, and the sense of danger have given
them a character of mixed ferocity and timidity.
But these very conditions, which have made it
impossible for them to form societies like some insects
and progress to a state of things resembling civiliza-
tion in men, have served to develop the mind that
is in a spider, making of him a very clever barbarian.
The spider’s only weapon of defence—his falees—
are as poor a protection against the assaults of his
insect foes as are teeth and finger-nails in man
facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 197
employed against wolves, bears, and tigers. And
the spider is here even worse off than man, since his
enemies are winged and able to sweep down in-
stantly on him from above; they are also protected
with an invulnerable shield, and are armed with deadly
stings. Like man, also, the spider has a soft, unpro-
tected body, while his muscular strength, compared
with that of the insects he has to contend with, is
almost nil. His position in nature then, with relation
to his enemies, is like that of man; only the spider
has this disadvantage, that he cannot combine with
others for protection. That he does protect himself
and maintains his place in nature is due, not to
special instincts, which are utterly insufficient, but
to the intelligence which supplements them. At
the same time this superior cunning is closely related
with, and probably results indirectly from, the web
he is provided with, and which is almost of the
nature of an artificial aid. Let us take the
imaginary case of a man-like monkey, or of an
arboreal man, born with a cord of great length.
attached to his waist, which could be either dragged
after him or carriedinacoil. After many accidents,
experience would eventually teach him to put it to
some use; practice would make him more and more
skilful in handling it, and, indirectly, it would be
the means of developing his latent mental faculties.
He would begin by using it, as the monkey does
its prehensile tail, to swing himself from branch to
branch, and finally, to escape from an enemy or in-
pursuit of his prey, he would be able by means of
his cord to drop himself with safety from the tallest
trees, or fly down the steepest precipices. He would
198 The Naturalist in La Plata.
coil up his cord to make a bed to lie on, and also
use it for binding branches together when build-
ing himself a refuge. In a close fight, he would
endeavour to entangle an adversary, and at last he
would learn to make a snare with it to capture his
prey. To all these, and to a hundred other uses,
the spider has put his web. And when we see him
spread his beautiful geometric snare, held by lines
fixed to widely separated points, while he sits con-
cealed in his web-lined retreat amongst the leaves
where every touch on the far-reaching structure is
telegraphed to him by the communicating line
faithfully as if a nerve had been touched, we must
admire the wonderful perfection to which he has
attained in the use of his cord. By these means he
is able to conquer creatures too swift and strong for
him, and make them his prey. When we see him
repairing damages, weighting his light fabric in
windy weather with pebbles or sticks, as a fisher
weights his net, and cutting loose a captive whose
great strength threatens the destruction of the web,
then we begin to suspect that he has, above his
special instinct, a reason that guides, modifies, and
in many ways supplements it. It is not, however,
only on these great occasions, when the end is
sought by unusual means, that spiders show their
intelligence ; for even these things might be con-
sidered by some as merely parts of one great com-
plex instinct; but at all times, in all things, the
observer who watches them closely cannot fail to be
convinced that they possess a guiding principle
which is not mere instinct. What the stick or stone
was to primitive man, when he had made the dis-
Facts and Thoughts about Spiders. 199
covery that by holding it in his hand he greatly
increased the force of his blow, the possession of a
web has been to the spider in developing that spark
of intellect which it possesses in common with all
animal organisms,
CHAPTER XV.
THE DEATH-FEIGNING INSTINCT.
Most people are familiar with the phenomenon of
** death-feigning,” commonly seen in coleopterous
insects, and in many spiders. This highly curious
instinct is also possessed by some vertebrates. In
insects it is probably due to temporary paralysis
occasioned by sudden concussion, for when beetles
alight abruptly, though voluntarily, they assume that
appearance of death, which lasts for a few moments.
Some species, indeed, are so highly sensitive that
the slightest touch, or even a sudden menace, will
instantly throw them into this motionless, death-
simulating condition. Curiously enough, the same
causes which produce this trance in slow-moving
species, like those of Scarabeus for example, have
a precisely contrary effect on species endowed with
great activity. Rapacious beetles, when disturbed,
scuttle quickly out of sight, and some water-beetles
spin about the surface, in circles or zigzag lines, so
rapidly as to confuse the eye. Our common long-
legged spiders (Pholcus) when approached draw
their feet together in the middle of the web, and spin
the body round with such velocity as to resemble a
whirligig.
Certain mammals and birds also possess the death-
The Death-fergning Instinct. 201
‘simulating instinct, though it is hardly possible to
believe that the action springs from the same im-
mediate cause in vertebrates and ininsects. In the
latter it appears to be a purely physical instinct, the
direct result of an extraneous cause, and resembling
the motions of a plant. In mammals and birds it
is evident that violent emotion, and not the rough
handling experienced, is the final cause of the
swoon.
Passing over venomous snakes, skunks, and a few
other species in which the presence of danger excites
only anger, fear has a powerful, and in some cases
a disabling, effect on animals; and it is this para-
lyzing effect of fear on which the death-feigning
instinct, found only in a few widely-separated species,
has probably been built up by the slow cumulative
process of natural selection. ,
Ihave met with some curious instances of the
paralyzing effect of fear. I was told by some hunters
in an outlying district of the pampas of its effect
on a jaguar they started, and which took refuge in
a dense clump of dry reeds. Though they could see
it, it was impossible to throw the lasso over its head,
and, after vainly trying to dislodge it, they at length
set fire to the reeds. Still it refused to stir, but lay
with head erect, fiercely glaring at them through the
flames. Finally it disappeared from sight in the
black smoke; and when the fire had burnt itself out,
it was found, dead and charred, in the same spot.
On the pampas the gauchos frequently take the
black-necked swan by frightening it. When the
birds are feeding or resting on the grass, two or
three men or boys on horseback go quietly to lee-
202 The Naturalist in La Plata.
ward of the flock, and when opposite to it suddenly
wheel and charge it at full speed, uttering loud
shouts, by which the birds are thrown into such terror
that they are incapable of flying, and are quickly
despatched.
I have also seen gaucho boys catch the Silver-bill
(Lichenops perspicillata) by hurling a stick or stone
at the bird, then rushing at it, when it sits perfectly
still, disabled by fear, and allows itself to be taken.
I myself once succeeded in taking a small bird of
another species in the same way.
Amongst mammals our common fox (Canis azare),
and one of the opossums (Didelphys azarz), are
strangely subject to the death-simulating swoon.
For it does indeed seem strange that animals so
powerful, fierce, and able to inflict such terrible
injury with their teeth should also possess this safe-
guard, apparently more suited to weak inactive
creatures that cannot resist or escape from an enemy
and to animals very low down in the scale of being.
When a fox is caught in a trap or run down by dogs
he fights savagely at first, but by-and-by relaxes
his efforts, drops on the ground, and apparently
yields up the ghost. The deception is so well
carried out, that dogs are constantly taken in by it,
and no one, not previously acquainted with this
clever trickery of nature, but would at once pro-
nounce the creature dead, and worthy of some praise
for having perished in so brave a spirit. Now, when
in this condition of feigning death, I am quite sure
that the animal does not altogether lose conscious-
ness. It is exceedingly difficult to discover any
evidence of life in the opossum; but when one with-
The Death-feigning Instinct. 203
draws a little way from the feigning fox, and watches
him very attentively, a slight opening of the eye
may be detected; and, finally, when left to himself,
he does not recover and start up like an animal that
has been stunned, but slowly and cautiously raises
his head first, and only gets up when his foes are at
a safe distance. Yet I have seen gauchos, who are
very cruel to animals, practise the most barbarous
experiments on a captive fox without being able to
rouse it into exhibiting any sign of life. This has
greatly puzzled me, since, if death-feigning is simply
a cunning habit, the animal could not suffer itself
tobe mutilated without wincing. I can only believe
that the fox, though not insensible, as its behaviour
on being left to itself appears to prove, yet has its
body thrown by extreme terror into that benumbed
condition which simulates death, and during which
it is unable to feel the tortures practised on it.
The swoon sometimes actually takes place before
the animal has been touched, and even when the
exciting cause is at a considerable distance. I was
once riding with a gaucho, when we saw, on the open
level ground before us, a fox, not yet fully grown,
standing still and watching our approach. All at
once it dropped, and when we came up to the spot
it was lying stretched out, with eyes closed, and
apparently dead. Before passing on my companion,
who said it was not the first time he had seen such
a thing, lashed it vigorously with his whip for some
moments, but without producing the slightest
effect.
The death-feigning instinct 1s possessed in a very
marked degree by the spotted tinamou or common
204 The Naturalist in La Plata.
partridge of the pampas (Nothura maculosa). When
captured, after a few violent struggles to escape, it
drops its head, gasps two or three times, and to all
appearances dies. If, when you have seen this, you
release your hold, the eyes open instantly, and, with
startling suddenness and a noise of wings, it is up
and away, and beyond your reach for ever. Pos-
sibly, while your grasp is on the bird it does actually
become insensible, though its recovery from that
condition is almost instantaneous. Birds when
captured do sometimes die in the hand, purely from
terror. The tinamou is excessively timid, and some-
times when birds of this species are chased—for
gaucho boys frequently run them down on horse-
back—and when they find no burrows or thickets
to escape into, they actually drop down dead on the
plain. Probably, when they feign death in their
captor’s hand, they are in reality very near to
death.
CHAPTER XVI.
HUMMING- BIRDS.
Hvummine-Birps are perhaps the very loveliest things
in nature, and many celebrated writers have exhausted
their descriptive powers in vain efforts to picture
them to the imagination. The temptation was
certainly great, after describing the rich setting of
tropical foliage and flower, to speak at length of
the wonderful gem contained within it; but they
would in this case have been wise to imitate that
rmoodest novel-writer who introduced a blank space
on the page where the description of his matchless
heroine should have appeared. After all that has
been written, the first sight of a living humming-bird,
so unlike in its beauty all other beautiful things,
comes like a revelation to the mind. To give any
true conception of it by means of mere word-painting
is not more impossible than it would be to bottle
up a supply of the “living sunbeams” themselves,
and convey them across the Atlantic to scatter them
in a sparkling shower over the face of England.
Doubtless many who have never seen them in a
state of nature imagine that a tolerably correct idea
of their appearance can be gained from Gould’s
colossal monograph. The pictures there, however,
only represent dead humming-birds. A dead robin
206 The Naturalist in La Plata.
is, for purposes of bird-portraiture, as good as a live
robin ; the same may be said of even many brilliant-
plumaged species less aérial in their habits than
humming-birds. In butterflies the whole beauty is
seldom seen until the insect is dead, or, at any rate,
captive. It was not when Wallace saw the
Ornithoptera croesus flying about, but only when
he held it in his hands, and opened its glorious
wings, that the sight of its beauty overcame him so
powerfully. The special kind of beauty which
makes the first sight of a humming-bird a revelation
depends on the swift singular motions as much as
on the intense gem-like and metallic brilliancy of
the plumage.
The minute exquisite form, when the bird hovers
on misty wings, probing the flowers with its coral
spear, the fan-like tail expanded, and poising
motionless, exhibits the feathers shot with many
hues; and the next moment vanishes, or all but
vanishes, then reappears at another flower only to
vanish again, and so on successively, showing its
splendours not continuously, but like the intermitted
flashes of the firefly—this forms a picture of airy
grace and loveliness that baffles description. All
this glory disappears when the bird is dead, and
even when it. alights to rest ona bough. Sitting
still, it looks like an exceedingly attenuated king-
fisher, without the pretty plumage of that bird, but
retaining its stiff artificial manner. No artist has
been so bold as to attempt to depict the bird as it
actually appears, when balanced before a flower the
swift motion of the wings obliterates their form,
making them seem like a mist encircling the body ;
flumming-Birds. 207
yet it is precisely this formless cloud on which the
glittering body hangs suspended, which contributes
most to give the humming-bird its wonderful sprite-
like or extra-natural appearance. How strange,
then, to find bird-painters persisting in their efforts
to show the humming-bird flying! When they
draw it stiff and upright on its perch the picture is
honest, if ugly; the more ambitious representation
is a delusion and a mockery.
Coming to the actual colouring—the changeful
tints that glow with such intensity on the scale-
like feathers, it is curious to find that Gould seems
to have thought that all difficulties here had been
successfully overcome. The ‘‘new process” he
spoke so confidently about might no doubt be used
with advantage in reproducing the coarser metallic
reflections on a black plumage, such as we see in
the corvine birds; but the glittering garment of
the humming-bird, like the silvery lace woven by
the Epeira, gemmed with dew and touched with
rainbow-coloured light, has never been and never
can be imitated by art.
On this subject one of the latest observers of
humming-birds, Mr. Everard im Thurn, in his work
on British Guiana, has the following passage :—
‘Hardly more than one point of colour is in
reality ever visible in any one humming-bird at one
and the same time, for each point only shows its
peculiar and glittering colour when the light falls
upon it from a particular direction.