[Illustration:  THE GUANACO.]

The guanacos readily take to the water:  several times at Port Valdes they were seen swimming from island to island.  Byron, in his voyage, says he saw them drinking salt water.  Some of our officers likewise saw a herd apparently drinking the briny fluid from a salina near Cape Blanco.  I imagine in several parts of the country, if they do not drink salt water, they drink none at all.  In the middle of the day they frequently roll in the dust, in saucer-shaped hollows.  The males fight together; two one day passed quite close to me, squealing and trying to bite each other; and several were shot with their hides deeply scarred.  Herds sometimes appear to set out on exploring parties; at Bahia Blanca, where, within thirty miles of the coast, these animals are extremely unfrequent, I one day saw the tracks of thirty or forty, which had come in a direct line to a muddy salt-water creek.  They then must have perceived that they were approaching the sea, for they had wheeled with the regularity of cavalry, and had returned back in as straight a line as they had advanced.  The guanacos have one singular habit, which is to me quite inexplicable; namely, that on successive days they drop their dung in the same defined heap.  I saw one of these heaps which was eight feet in diameter, and was composed of a large quantity.  This habit, according to M. A. d’Orbigny, is common to all the species of the genus; it is very useful to the Peruvian Indians, who use the dung for fuel, and are thus saved the trouble of collecting it.

The guanacos appear to have favorite spots for lying down to die.  On the banks of the St. Cruz, in certain circumscribed spaces, which were generally bushy and all near the river, the ground was actually white with bones.  On one such spot I counted between ten and twenty heads.  I particularly examined the bones; they did not appear, as some scattered ones which I have seen, gnawed or broken, as if dragged together by beasts of prey.  The animals in most cases must have crawled, before dying, beneath and amongst the bushes.  Mr. Byron informs me that during a former voyage he observed the same circumstances on the banks of the Rio Gallegos.  I do not at all understand the reason of this, but I may observe, that the wounded guanacos at the St. Cruz invariably walked towards the river.  At St. Jago in the Cape de Verd islands, I remember having seen in a ravine a retired corner covered with bones of the goat; we at the time exclaimed that it was the burial-ground of all the goats in the island.

BATS

(FROM STUDIES OF ANIMATED NATURE.)

BY W. S. DALLAS, F.L.S.

[Illustration:  SLEEPING BAT.]