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bits, rats and mice, eggs, seals, &c., and to their habits of
attacking king-penguins, if not seal, while alive, I presume that
a part of their unhesitating approach to man may be traced.
Naturalists say that these foxes are peculiar to this archipelago,
and they find difficulty in accounting for their presence
in that quarter only.* That they are now peculiar cannot he
doubted ; but how long they have been so is a very different
question. As I know that three hairy sheep, brought to England
from Sierra Leone in Africa, became woolly in a few
years, and that woolly sheep soon become hairy in a hot country
(besides that their outward form alters considerably after
a few generations) ; and as I have both seen and heard of wild
eats, known to have been born in a domestic state, whose size
surpassed that of their parents so much as to be remarkable ;
whose coats had become long and rough ; and whose physiognomies
were quite different from those of their race who
were still domestic ; I can see nothing extraordinary in foxes
carried from Tierra del Fuego to Falkland Island becoming
longer-legged, more bulky, and differently coated. But how
were they carried there.? In this manner :—In page 242, the
current was mentioned which always sets from Staten Land
towards the southern shores of the Falklands—icebergs or trees
Forster, as an exception, saw no difficulty in accounting for their
involuntary migration. “ M. Forster, Anglais, de la Société Royale, qui
a fait à cet ouvrage l’honneur de le traduire, a accompagné sa traduction
de plusieurs notes.”—“ Je dois dire que toutes ses notes ne soiitpas égale-
ment justes; par exemple, dans le chapitre de l’Histoire Naturelle des
les Malouines, il est surpris de ce que je le suis d’avoir trouvé sur ces
îles un animal quadrupède, et de mon embarras sur la manière dont il a
ete transporté. Il ajoute qu’ayant passé comme je l’ai fait plusieurs
années en Canada, j ’aurois dû savoir que des quadrupèdes terrestres se
trouvant sur de grandes glaces au moment où elles sont détachées des
terres, sont emportées à la haute mer, et abordent à des côtes fort éloignées
de leur pays natal, sur lesquelles ces masses de glace viennent
échouer. Je sais ce fait; mais M. Forster ne sait pas que jamais les
voyageurs n’ont rencontré de glaces flottantes dans les environs des îles
Malouines, et que dans ces contrées il ne s’y en peut pas former, n’y ayant
ni gi-and fleuve ni même aucune rivière un peu considérable Volage
de Bougainville, seconde édition, tom. t. pp. xiv. et xv. (note).
Il
drifted hy that current and westerly winds afford the means
of transport ; and I appeal to the quotations already made
from Forster’s and Bougainville’s works for proof that animals
may be so carried.
Because we do not know that there are foxes at this time
upon Staten Land, it does not follow that there are none, or
that they have never been there ; and as guanacoes, pumas, and
foxes are now found on Eastern Tierra del Fuego, why might
not foxes have been carried to Staten Land and thence to the
Falklands, or, which is still more probable, drifted from Eastern
Tierra del Fuego direct. I have heard somewhere, though
I cannot recollect the authority, that a man in North America
hauled a large old tree to the bank of a river in which it was
floating tow'ards the sea, and proceeded to secure it on the
bank, when to his astonishment, out of a hole in the tree
jumped a fine fox. Clusters of trees are often found floating,
which have fallen off a cliff, or have been carried out of a
river ; and once in the ocean, they are drifted along partly by
currents and partly by wind acting upon their branches or
exposed surfaces.
Rats and mice were probably taken to the Falklands by the
earlier navigators who landed there, whose ships were often
plagued with their numbers.* That they have varied from the
original stock in sharpness of nose, length of tail, colour, or
size, is to be expected, because we find that every animal varies
more or less in outward form and appearance, in consequence
of altered climate, food, or habits ; and that when a certain
* In Viedma’s Diary of an Expedition to P o rt San Julian in 1780, he
says, “ E l Bergantín San Francisco de Paula entrò en el riachuelo para
descargarlo y dar humazo a las ratas.” (The brig San Francisco de
Paulo went into the creek to be unloaded and smoked, to kill the rats (or
mice, ratas signifying either). In Magalhaens’ voyage (1520) “ Juan (a
Patagonian) seeing the Spaniards throwing mice into the sea, desired he
might have them for food; and those that were afterwards taken being
given to him, he carried them on shore.”—Burney, vol. i. p. 34. Perhaps
some of those mice reached land alive, as the ships lay close to the
shore. Many other vessels, however, afterwards staid some time in Port
San Julian, particularly those of Drake.
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