The Naturalist in La Plata | Page 7

emits a rank, musky odour, so powerful that
when the wind blows from it the effluvium 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 disturbed, 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
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. Furthermore, its habits change to suit its conditions: thus,
where nocturnal carnivores are its enemies, it is diurnal; but where man
appears as a chief persecutor, 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 intelligence, this
poor armadillo, a survival of the past, so old on the earth as to have
existed contemporaneously 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--Didelphys
crassicaudata--has a long slender, wedge-, shaped head and body,
admirably adapted for pushing 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 beautiful 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 themselves with the spoils of
beautiful dead animals--beast and bird. The other opossum is the black
and white Didelphys azarae; 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 awkwardly 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 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 branches with a
monkey-like agility. How reluctant Nature seems in some cases to undo
her own work! How long she will allow a specialized