high land, calve about a month earlier in the season that
the other coloured beasts on the lower land. It is interesting
thus to find the once domesticated cattle breaking
into three colours, of which some one colour would in all
probability ultimately prevail over the others, if the herds
were left undisturbed for the next several centuries.

The rabbit is another animal which has been introduced;
and has succeeded very well; so that they abound over large
parts of the island. Yet, like the horses, they are confined
within certain limits; for they have not crossed the central
chain of hills, nor would they have extended even so far as
its base, if, as the Gauchos informed me, small colonies has
not been carried there. I should not have supposed that
these animals, natives of northern Africa, could have existed
in a climate so humid as this, and which enjoys so little
sunshine that even wheat ripens only occasionally. It is
asserted that in Sweden, which any one would have thought
a more favourable climate, the rabbit cannot live out of
doors. The first few pairs, moreover, had here to content
against pre-existing enemies, in the fox and some large
hawks. The French naturalists have considered the black variety
a distinct species, and called it Lepus Magellanicus. [5]
They imagined that Magellan, when talking of an animal
under the name of "conejos" in the Strait of Magellan,
referred to this species; but he was alluding to a small cavy,
which to this day is thus called by the Spaniards. The
Gauchos laughed at the idea of the black kind being different
from the grey, and they said that at all events it had
not extended its range any further than the grey kind; that