The Naturalist in La Plata by W. H. Hudson
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W. H. Hudson >> The Naturalist in La Plata
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23 Produced by Eric Eldred
THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA
BY
W. H. HUDSON, C.M.Z.S.
JOINT AUTHOR OF "ARGENTINE ORNITHOLOGY"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. SMIT
THIRD EDITION.
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1895
PREFACE.
The plan I have followed in this work has been to sift and arrange the
facts I have gathered concerning the habits of the animals best known to
me, preserving those only, which, in my judgment, appeared worth
recording. In some instances a variety of subjects have linked
themselves together in my mind, and have been grouped under one heading;
consequently the scope of the book is not indicated by the list of
contents: this want is, however, made good by an index at the end.
It is seldom an easy matter to give a suitable name to a book of this
description. I am conscious that the one I have made choice of displays
a lack of originality; also, that this kind of title has been used
hitherto for works constructed more or less on the plan of the famous
_Naturalist on the Amazons._ After I have made this apology the reader,
on his part, will readily admit that, in treating of the Natural History
of a district so well known, and often described as the southern portion
of La Plata, which has a temperate climate, and where nature is neither
exuberant nor grand, a personal narrative would have seemed superfluous.
The greater portion of the matter contained in this volume has already
seen the light in the form of papers contributed to the _Field,_ with
other journals that treat of Natural History; and to the monthly
magazines:--_Longmans', The Nineteenth Century, The Gentleman's
Magazine,_ and others: I am indebted to the Editors and Proprietors of
these periodicals for kindly allowing me to make use of this material.
Of all animals, birds have perhaps afforded me most pleasure; but most
of the fresh knowledge I have collected in this department is contained
in a larger work _(Argentine Ornithology),_ of which Dr. P. L. Sclater
is part author. As I have not gone over any of the subjects dealt with
in that work, bird-life has not received more than a fair share of
attention in the present volume.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. THE DESERT PAMPAS
CHAPTER II. CUB PUMA, OR LION OF AMERICA
CHAPTER III. WAVE OF LIFE
CHAPTER IV. SOME CURIOUS ANIMAL WEAPONS
CHAPTER V. FEAR IN BIRDS
CHAPTER VI. PARENTAL AND EARLY INSTINCTS
CHAPTER VII. THE MEPHITIC SKUNK
CHAPTER VIII. MIMICRY AND WARNING COLOURS IN GRASSHOPPERS
CHAPTER IX. DRAGON-FLY STORMS
CHAPTER X. MOSQUITOES AND PARASITE PROBLEMS
CHAPTER XI. HUMBLE-BEES AND OTHER MATTERS
CHAPTER XII. A NOBLE WASP
CHAPTER XIII. NATURE'S NIGHT-LIGHTS
CHAPTER XIV. FACTS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT SPIDERS
CHAPTER XV. THE DEATH-FEIGNING INSTINCT
CHAPTER XVI. HUMMING-BIRDS
CHAPTER XVII. THE CRESTED SCREAMER
CHAPTER XVIII. THE WOODHEWER FAMILY
CHAPTER XIX. MUSIC AND DANCING IN NATURE
CHAPTER XX. BIOGRAPHY OF THE VIZCACHA
CHAPTER XXI. THE DYING HUANACO
CHAPTER XXII. THE STRANGE INSTINCTS OF CATTLE
CHAPTER XXIII. HORSE AND MAN
CHAPTER XXIV. SEEN AND LOST
APPENDIX
INDEX
THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA,
CHAPTER I.
THE DESERT PAMPAS.
During recent years we have heard much about the great and rapid changes
now going on in the plants and animals of all the temperate regions of
the globe colonized by Europeans. These changes, if taken merely as
evidence of material progress, must be a matter of rejoicing to those
who are satisfied, and more than satisfied, with our system of
civilization, or method of outwitting Nature by the removal of all
checks on the undue increase of our own species. To one who finds a
charm in things as they exist in the unconquered provinces of Nature's
dominions, and who, not being over-anxious to reach the end of his
journey, is content to perform it on horseback, or in a waggon drawn by
bullocks, it is permissible to lament the altered aspect of the earth's
surface, together with the disappearance of numberless noble and
beautiful forms, both of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. For he
cannot find it in his heart to love the forms by which they are
replaced; these are cultivated and domesticated, and have only become
useful to man at the cost of that grace and spirit which freedom and
wildness give. In numbers they are many--twenty-five millions of sheep
in this district, fifty millions in that, a hundred millions in a
third--but how few are the species in place of those destroyed? and when
the owner of many sheep and much wheat desires variety--for he possesses
this instinctive desire, albeit in conflict with and overborne by the
perverted instinct of destruction--what is there left to him, beyond his
very own, except the weeds that spring up in his fields under all skies,
ringing him round with old-world monotonous forms, as tenacious of their
undesired union with him as the rats and cockroaches that inhabit his
house?
We hear most frequently of North America, New Zealand, and Australia in
this connection; but nowhere on the globe has civilization "written
strange defeatures" more markedly than on that great area of level
country called by English writers _the pampas_, but by the Spanish more
appropriately _La Pampa_--from the Quichua word signifying open space or
country--since it forms in most part one continuous plain, extending on
its eastern border from the river Parana, in latitude 32 degrees, to the
Patagonian formation on the river Colorado, and comprising about two
hundred thousand square miles of humid, grassy country.
This district has been colonized by Europeans since the middle of the
sixteenth century; but down to within a very few years ago immigration
was on too limited a scale to make any very great change; and, speaking
only of the pampean country, the conquered territory was a long,
thinly-settled strip, purely pastoral, and the Indians, with their
primitive mode of warfare, were able to keep back the invaders from the
greater portion of their ancestral hunting-grounds. Not twenty years
ago a ride of two hundred miles, starting from the capital city,
Buenos Ayres, was enough to place one well beyond the furthest
south-western frontier outpost. In 1879 the Argentine Government
determined to rid the country of the aborigines, or, at all events, to
break their hostile and predatory spirit once for all; with the result
that the entire area of the grassy pampas, with a great portion of
the sterile pampas and Patagonia, has been made available to the
emigrant. There is no longer anything to deter the starvelings
of the Old World from possessing themselves of this new land of
promise, flowing, like Australia, with milk and tallow, if not with
honey; any emasculated migrant from a Genoese or Neapolitan
slum is now competent to "fight the wilderness" out there, with his
eight-shilling fowling-piece and the implements of his trade. The
barbarians no longer exist to frighten his soul with dreadful war cries;
they have moved away to another more remote and shadowy region, called
in their own language _Alhuemapu_, and not known to geographers. For
the results so long and ardently wished for have swiftly followed on
General Roca's military expedition; and the changes witnessed during the
last decade on the pampas exceed in magnitude those which had been
previously effected by three centuries of occupation.
In view of this wave of change now rapidly sweeping away the old
order, with whatever beauty and grace it possessed, it might not seem
inopportune at the present moment to give a rapid sketch, from the field
naturalist's point of view, of the great plain, as it existed before the
agencies introduced by European colonists had done their work, and as it
still exists in its remoter parts.
The humid, grassy, pampean country extends, roughly speaking, half-way
from the Atlantic Ocean and the Plata and Parana rivers to the Andes,
and passes gradually into the "Monte Formation," or _sterile pampa_--a
sandy, more or less barren district, producing a dry, harsh, ligneous
vegetation, principally thorny bushes and low trees, of which the chanar
(Gurliaca decorticans) is the most common; hence the name of
"Chanar-steppe" used by some writers: and this formation extends
southwards down into Patagonia. Scientists have not yet been able to
explain why the pampas, with a humid climate, and a soil exceedingly
rich, have produced nothing but grass, while the dry, sterile
territories on their north, west, and south borders have an arborescent
vegetation. Darwin's conjecture that the extreme violence of the
_pampero,_ or south-west wind, prevented trees from growing, is now
proved to have been ill-founded since the introduction of the Eucalyptus
globulus; for this noble tree attains to an extraordinary height on the
pampas, and exhibits there a luxuriance of foliage never seen in
Australia.
To this level area--my "parish of Selborne," or, at all events, a goodly
portion of it--with the sea on one hand, and on the other the
practically infinite expanse of grassy desert--another sea, not "in vast
fluctuations fixed," but in comparative calm--I should like to conduct
the reader in imagination: a country all the easier to be imagined on
account of the absence of mountains, woods, lakes, and rivers. There is,
indeed, little to be imagined--not even a sense of vastness; and Darwin,
touching on this point, in the _Journal of a Naturalist,_ aptly
says:--"At sea, a person's eye being six feet above the surface of the
water, his horizon is two miles and four-fifths distant. In like manner,
the more level the plain, the more nearly does the horizon approach
within these narrow limits; and this, in my opinion, entirely destroys
the grandeur which one would have imagined that a vast plain would have
possessed."
I remember my first experience of a hill, after having been always shut
within "these narrow limits." It was one of the range of sierras near
Cape Corrientes, and not above eight hundred feet high; yet, when I had
gained the summit, I was amazed at the vastness of the earth, as it
appeared to me from that modest elevation. Persons born and bred on the
pampas, when they first visit a mountainous district, frequently
experience a sensation as of "a ball in the throat" which seems to
prevent free respiration.
In most places the rich, dry soil is occupied by a coarse grass, three
or four feet high, growing in large tussocks, and all the year round of
a deep green; a few slender herbs and trefoils, with long, twining
stems, maintain a frail existence among the tussocks; but the strong
grass crowds out most plants, and scarcely a flower relieves its uniform
everlasting verdure. There are patches, sometimes large areas, where it
does not grow, and these are carpeted by small creeping herbs of a
livelier green, and are gay in spring with flowers, chiefly of the
composite and papilionaceous kinds; and verbenas, scarlet, purple, rose,
and white. On moist or marshy grounds there are also several lilies,
yellow, white, and red, two or three flags, and various other small
flowers; but altogether the flora of the pampas is the poorest in
species of any fertile district on the globe. On moist clayey ground
flourishes the stately pampa grass, Gynerium argenteum, the spears of
which often attain a height of eight or nine feet. I have ridden through
many leagues of this grass with the feathery spikes high as my head, and
often higher. It would be impossible for me to give anything like an
adequate idea of the exquisite loveliness, at certain times and seasons,
of this queen of grasses, the chief glory of the solitary pampa.
Everyone is familiar with it in cultivation; but the garden-plant has a
sadly decaying, draggled look at all times, and to my mind, is often
positively ugly with its dense withering mass of coarse leaves, drooping
on the ground, and bundle of spikes, always of the same dead white or
dirty cream-colour. Now colour--the various ethereal tints that give a
blush to its cloud-like purity--is one of the chief beauties of this
grass on its native soil; and travellers who have galloped across the
pampas at a season of the year when the spikes are dead, and white as
paper or parchment, have certainly missed its greatest charm. The plant
is social, and in some places where scarcely any other kind exists it
covers large areas with a sea of fleecy-white plumes; in late summer,
and in autumn, the tints are seen, varying from the most delicate rose,
tender and illusive as the blush on the white under-plumage of some
gulls, to purple and violaceous. At no time does it look so perfect as
in the evening, before and after sunset, when the softened light imparts
a mistiness to the crowding plumes, and the traveller cannot help
fancying that the tints, which then seem richest, are caught from the
level rays of the sun, or reflected from the coloured vapours of the
afterglow.
The last occasion on which I saw the pampa grass in its full beauty was
at the close of a bright day in March, ending in one of those perfect
sunsets seen only in the wilderness, where no lines of house or hedge
mar the enchanting disorder of nature, and the earth and sky tints are
in harmony. I had been travelling all day with one companion, and for
two hours we had ridden through the matchless grass, which spread away
for miles on every side, the myriads of white spears, touched with
varied colour, blending in the distance and appearing almost like the
surface of a cloud. Hearing a swishing sound behind us, we turned
sharply round, and saw, not forty yards away in our rear, a party of
five mounted Indians, coming swiftly towards us: but at the very moment
we saw them their animals came to a dead halt, and at the same instant
the five riders leaped up, and stood erect on their horses' backs.
Satisfied that they had no intention of attacking us, and were only
looking out for strayed horses, we continued watching them for some
time, as they stood gazing away over the plain in different directions,
motionless and silent, like bronze men on strange horse-shaped pedestals
of dark stone; so dark in their copper skins and long black hair,
against the far-off ethereal sky, flushed with amber light; and at their
feet, and all around, the cloud of white and faintly-blushing plumes.
That farewell scene was printed very vividly on my memory, but cannot be
shown to another, nor could it be even if a Ruskin's pen or a Turner's
pencil were mine; for the flight of the sea-mew is not more impossible
to us than the power to picture forth the image of Nature in our souls,
when she reveals herself in one of those "special moments" which have
"special grace" in situations where her wild beauty has never been
spoiled by man.
At other hours and seasons the general aspect of the plain is
monotonous, and in spite of the unobstructed view, and the unfailing
verdure and sunshine, somewhat melancholy, although never sombre: and
doubtless the depressed and melancholy feeling the pampa inspires in
those who are unfamiliar with it is due in a great measure to the
paucity of life, and to the profound silence. The wind, as may well be
imagined on that extensive level area, is seldom at rest; there, as in
the forest, it is a "bard of many breathings," and the strings it
breathes upon give out an endless variety of sorrowful sounds, from the
sharp fitful sibilations of the dry wiry grasses on the barren places,
to the long mysterious moans that swell and die in the tall polished
rushes of the marsh. It is also curious to note that with a few
exceptions the resident birds are comparatively very silent, even those
belonging to groups which elsewhere are highly loquacious. The reason of
this is not far to seek. In woods and thickets, where birds abound
most, they are continually losing sight of each other, and are only
prevented from scattering by calling often; while the muffling effect on
sound of the close foliage, to' which may be added a spirit of emulation
where many voices are heard, incites most species, especially those that
are social, to exert their voices to the utmost pitch in singing,
calling, and screaming. On the open pampas, birds, which are not
compelled to live concealed on the surface, can see each other at long
distances, and perpetual calling is not needful: moreover, in that still
atmosphere sound travels far. As a rule their voices are strangely
subdued; nature's silence has infected them, and they have become silent
by habit. This is not the case with aquatic species, which are nearly
all migrants from noisier regions, and mass themselves in lagoons and
marshes, where they are all loquacious together. It is also noteworthy
that the subdued bird-voices, some of which are exceedingly sweet and
expressive, and the notes of many of the insects and batrachians have a
great resemblance, and seem to be in accord with the aeolian tones of
the wind in reeds and grasses: a stranger to the pampas, even a
naturalist accustomed to a different fauna, will often find it hard to
distinguish between bird, frog, and insect voices.
The mammalia is poor in species, and with the single exception of the
well-known vizcacha (Lagostomus trichodactylus), there is not one of
which it can truly be said that it is in any special way the product of
the pampas, or, in other words, that its instincts are better suited to
the conditions of the pampas than to those of other districts. As a
fact, this large rodent inhabits a vast extent of country, north, west,
and south of the true pampas, but nowhere is he so thoroughly on his
native heath as on the great grassy plain. There, to some extent, he
even makes his own conditions, like the beaver. He lives in a small
community of twenty or thirty members, in a village of deep-chambered
burrows, all with their pit-like entrances closely grouped together; and
as the village endures for ever, or for an indefinite time, the earth
constantly being brought up forms a mound thirty or forty feet in
diameter; and this protects the habitation from floods on low or level
ground. Again, he is not swift of foot, and all rapacious beasts are his
enemies; he also loves to feed on tender succulent herbs and grasses, to
seek for which he would have to go far afield among the giant grass,
where his watchful foes are lying in wait to seize him; he saves himself
from this danger by making a clearing all round his abode, on which a
smooth turf is formed; and here the animals feed and have their evening
pastimes in comparative security: for when an enemy approaches, he is
easily seen; the note of alarm is sounded, and the whole company
scuttles away to their refuge. In districts having a different soil and
vegetation, as in Patagonia, the vizcachas' curious, unique instincts
are of no special advantage, which makes it seem probable that they have
been formed on the pampas.
How marvellous a thing it seems that the two species of mammalians--the
beaver and the vizcacha--that most nearly simulate men's intelligent
actions in their social organizing instincts, and their habitations,
which are made to endure, should belong to an order so low down as the
Rodents! And in the case of the latter species, it adds to the marvel
when we find that the vizcacha, according to Water-house, is the lowest
of the order in its marsupial affinities.
The vizcacha is the most common rodent on the pampas, and the Rodent
order is represented by the largest number of species. The finest is the
so-called Patagonian hare--Dolichotis patagonica--a beautiful animal
twice as large as a hare, with ears shorter and more rounded, and legs
relatively much longer. The fur is grey and chestnut brown. It is
diurnal in its habits, lives in kennels, and is usually met with in
pairs, or small flocks. It is better suited to a sterile country like
Patagonia than to the grassy humid plain; nevertheless it was found
throughout the whole of the pampas; but in a country where the wisdom of
a Sir William Harcourt was never needed to slip the leash, this king of
the Rodentia is now nearly extinct.
A common rodent is the coypu--Myiopotamus coypu--yellowish in colour
with bright red incisors; a rat in shape, and as large as an otter. It
is aquatic, lives in holes in the banks, and where there are no banks it
makes a platform nest among the rushes. Of an evening they are all out
swimming and playing in the water, conversing together in their strange
tones, which sound like the moans and cries of wounded and suffering
men; and among them the mother-coypu is seen with her progeny, numbering
eight or nine, with as many on her back as she can accommodate, while
the others swim after her, crying for a ride.
With reference to this animal, which, as we have seen, is prolific, a
strange thing once happened in Buenos Ayres. The coypu was much more
abundant fifty years ago than now, and its skin, which has a fine fur
under the long coarse hair, was largely exported to Europe. About that
time the Dictator Rosas issued a decree prohibiting the hunting of the
coypu. The result was that the animals increased and multiplied
exceedingly, and, abandoning their aquatic habits, they became
terrestrial and migratory, and swarmed everywhere in search of food.
Suddenly a mysterious malady fell on them, from which they quickly
perished, and became almost extinct.
What a blessed thing it would be for poor rabbit-worried Australia if a
similar plague should visit that country, and fall on the right animal!
On the other hand, what a calamity if the infection, wide-spread,
incurable, and swift as the wind in its course, should attack the
too-numerous sheep! And who knows what mysterious, unheard-of
retributions that revengeful deity Nature may not be meditating in her
secret heart for the loss of her wild four-footed children slain by
settlers, and the spoiling of her ancient beautiful order!
A small pampa rodent worthy of notice is the Cavia australis, called
_cui_ in the vernacular from its voice: a timid, social, mouse-coloured
little creature, with a low gurgling language, like running babbling
waters; in habits resembling its domestic pied relation the guinea pig.
It loves to run on clean ground, and on the pampas makes little
rat-roads all about its hiding-place, which little roads tell a story to
the fox, and such like; therefore the little cavy's habits, and the
habits of all cavies, I fancy, are not so well suited to the humid
grassy region as to other districts, with sterile ground to run and play
upon, and thickets in which to hide.
A more interesting animal is the Ctenomys magellanica, a little less
than the rat in size, with a shorter tail, pale grey fur, and red
incisors. It is called _tuco-tuco_ from its voice, and _oculto_ from its
habits; for it is a dweller underground, and requires a loose, sandy
soil in which, like the mole, it may _swim_ beneath the surface.
Consequently the pampa, with its heavy, moist mould, is not the tuco's
proper place; nevertheless, wherever there is a stretch of sandy soil,
or a range of dunes, there it is found living; not seen, but heard; for
all day long and all night sounds its voice, resonant and loud, like a
succession of blows from a hammer; as if a company of gnomes were
toiling far down underfoot, beating on their anvils, first with strong
measured strokes, then with lighter and faster, and with a swing and
rhythm as if the little men were beating in time to some rude chant
unheard above the surface. How came these isolated colonies of a species
so subterranean in habits, and requiring a sandy soil to move in, so far
from their proper district--that sterile country from which they are
separated by wide, unsuitable areas? They cannot perform long overland
journeys like the rat. Perhaps the dunes have travelled, carrying their
little cattle with them.
Greatest among the carnivores are the two cat-monarchs of South America,
the jaguar and puma. Whatever may be their relative positions elsewhere,
on the pampas the puma is mightiest, being much more abundant and better
able to thrive than its spotted rival. Versatile in its preying habits,
its presence on the pampa is not surprising; but probably only an
extreme abundance of large mammalian prey, which has not existed in
recent times, could have, tempted an animal of the river and
forest-loving habits of the jaguar to colonize this cold, treeless, and
comparatively waterless desert. There are two other important cats. The
grass-cat, not unlike Felis catus in its robust form and dark colour,
but a larger, more powerful animal, inexpressibly savage in disposition.
The second, Felis geoffroyi, is a larger and more beautiful animal,
coloured like a leopard; it is called wood-cat, and, as the name would
seem to indicate, is an intruder from wooded districts north of the
pampas.
There are two canines: one is Azara's beautiful grey fox-like dog,
purely a fox in habits, and common everywhere. The other is far more
interesting and extremely rare; it is called _aguara,_ its nearest ally
being the _aguara-guazu,_ the Canis jubatus or maned wolf of
naturalists, found north of the pampean district. The aguara is smaller
and has no mane; it is like the dingo in size, but slimmer and with a
sharper nose, and lias a much brighter red colour. At night when camping
out I have heard its dismal screams, but the screamer was sought in
vain; while from the gauchos of the frontier I could only learn that it
is a harmless, shy, solitary animal, that ever flies to remoter wilds
from its destroyer, man. They offered me a skin--what more could I want?
Simple souls! it was no more to me than the skin of a dead dog, with
long, bright red hair. Those who love dead animals may have them in any
number by digging with a. spade in that vast sepulchre of the pampas,
where perished the hosts of antiquity. I love the living that are above
the earth; and how small a remnant they are in South America we know,
and now yearly becoming more precious as it dwindles away.
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