The Naturalist in La Plata

W. H. (William Henry) Hudson

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• Publié par: moshig
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 17
• Langue: English

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Title: The Naturalist in La Plata
Author: W. H. Hudson
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA ***
Produced by Eric EldredPampas grass: Indians on the look-out for strayed horses
THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA
BY
W. H. HUDSON, C.M.Z.S.
JOINT AUTHOR OF "ARGENTINE ORNITHOLOGY"
WHITE-BANDED MOCKING-BIRD
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. SMIT
THIRD EDITION.
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1895PREFACE.
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
VI
Preface.
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 ....... 1
CHAPTER II. CUB PUMA, OR LION OF AMERICA 31
CHAPTER III. WAVE OF LIFE ........ 59
CHAPTER IV. SOME CURIOUS ANIMAL WEAPONS ..... 69
CHAPTER V. FEAR IN BIRDS ........ 83
CHAPTER VI. PARENTAL AND EARLY INSTINCTS ..... 101
CHAPTER VII. THE MEPHITIC SKUNK . 116
CHAPTER VIII. MIMICRY AND WARNING COLOURS IN GRASSHOPPERS . 124
CHAPTER IX. DRAGON-FLY STORMS ....... 130
viii Contents.CHAPTER X. MOSQUITOES AND PARASITE PROBLEMS .... 135
CHAPTER XI. HUMBLE-BEES AND OTHER MATTERS . . . .154
CHAPTER XII. A NOBLE WASP . ,. . . . . . . . 162
CHAPTER XIII. NATURE'S NIGHT-LIGHTS ....... 168
CHAPTER XIV. FACTS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT SPIDERS . 178
CHAPTER XV. THE DEATH-FEIGNING INSTINCT . . . 200
CHAPTER XVI. HUMMING-BIRDS . . . . . . , . . 205
CHAPTER XVII. THE CRESTED SCREAMER . . . . . . . . 221
CHAPTER XVIII. THE WOODHEWER FAMILY 235
CHAPTER XIX. MUSIC AND DANCING IN NATURE ..... 261
CHAPTER XX. BIOGRAPHY OF THE VIZCACHA ...... 289
CHAPTER XXI. THE DYING HUANACO ....... 314
PAGE
CHAPTER XXII. THE STRANGE INSTINCTS OF CATTLE ... 329
CHAPTER XXIII. HORSE AND MAN ........ 348
CHAPTER XXIV. SEEN AND LOST ..,,. 363
APPENDIX ...... 384
INDEX ........- 391
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Pampas Grass : Indians on the look-out for strayed
Horses ....... Frontispiece
Coypú .......... 12
Puma killed by Cow ....... 39
Puma attacking Jaguar ..... To face 48
Armadillo killing Snake ....... 72
Wrestler Frog . . . . . . . . .77
Ceratrophrys ornata ........ 80
Didelphys azaree and young . . . . . . 102
Pampa Sheep ......... 109Skunk and Dog . . . . . . . .123
Storm, of Dragon-flies ..... To face, 132
Ixodes; before and after a blood diet . . . .142
Fire-wood gatherer and Bird-fly .. . . . .147
A Bee's Kevengo . . . . . . . .165
Mygale fusca, threatening ....... 191
Loddigesia Mirabilis . . . . . . . .215
Crested Screamer . . . . . . . . 224
Some Woodhewers' beaks . . . . . . .239
Dance of Ypecaha Rails ....... 267
Wing-display of Jacanas ....... 268
Dance of Spur-winged Lapwings ..... 270
White-banded Mocking-bird ...... 277
Vizcachas ......... 290
The Dying Huanaco ...... To face 318
Gaucho . . . . . . , , . . 350
A lost Humming-bird ....... 367
Small Spine-tail and Nest ,...,. 371
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
B
2 The Naturalist in La Plata.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,
thinly3 The Naturalist in La Plata.
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