well acquainted, disporting themselves in a manner
that took me completely by surprise. While out
tinamou shooting one day in autumn, near my own home
in La Plata, I spied a troop of about a dozen weasels
racing madly about over a vizcacha village—the
mound and group of pit-like burrows inhabited by a
community of vizcachas. These weasels were of
the large common species, Galictis barbara, about
the size of a cat; and were engaged in a pastime resembling
a complicated dance, and so absorbed were they on that
occasion that they took no notice of me when I walked
up to within nine or ten yards of them, and stood
still to watch the performance. They were all
swiftly racing about and leaping over the pits, always
doubling quickly back when the limit of the mound
was reached, and although apparently carried away
with excitement, and crossing each other’s tracks
at all angles, and this so rapidly and with so many
changes of direction that I became confused when trying
to keep any one animal in view, they never collided
nor even came near enough to touch one another.
The whole performance resembled, on a greatly magnified
scale and without its beautiful smoothness and lightning
swiftness, the fantastic dance of small black water-beetles,
frequently seen on the surface of a pool or stream,
during which the insects glide about in a limited
area with such celerity as to appear like black curving
lines traced by flying invisible pens; and as the
lines everywhere cross and intersect, they form an
intricate pattern on the surface, After watching the
weasel dance for some minutes, I stepped up to the
mound, whereupon the animals became alarmed and rushed
pell-mell into the burrows, but only to reappear in
a few seconds, thrusting up their long ebony-black
necks and flat grey-capped heads, snarling chattering
at me, glaring with fierce, beady eyes.
In November and December, 1893, a short correspondence
appeared in the Field on the curious subject
of “Dogs burying their dead.” It arose
through a letter from a Mr.
Gould, of Albany, Western
Australia, relating the following incident:—
A settler shot a bitch from a neighbouring estate
that had formed the habit of coming on to his land
to visit and play with his dog. The dog, finding
his companion dead, was observed to dig a large hole
in the ground, into which he dragged the carcase;
but he did not cover it with earth. The writer
wished to know if any reader of the Field had
met with a similar case. Some notes, which I
contributed in reply to this letter, bear on one of
the subjects treated in the chapter on “strange
instincts,” namely, the instinct of social animals
to protect and shield their fellows; and for this
reason I have thought it best to reproduce them in
this place.
