e northern provinces
sometimes bring these lions to Lima, and get money for showing them.
They lead them by a string, or put them in large sacks, and carry them
about on their backs, until a show-loving crowd assembles around them.
The ounces are very bold and fierce. They penetrate into plantations,
and attack children and horses. They very cunningly avoid the numerous
snares laid for them by the Indians. An encounter with this animal is
serious and dangerous. A hunt seldom ends without some of the pursuers
being killed or wounded by the animal.

I have already spoken of the seals. There are three kinds of didelphic
or marsupial animals on the coast. The natives call them _mucamuca_.
They live in bushes and shrubberies, and they often find their way into
the store-rooms of the plantations.

Of the great section of the _Rodentia_, I know of only seven species in
Peru; but I have no doubt that this number might be doubled by a careful
search in the valleys on the coast. The common house-mouse is very
numerous in Lima. The brown rat appears seldom. It came to Peru only a
few years ago; but there is reason to apprehend that it will soon be
very numerous. Probably it has been imported by Hamburgh ships. In
Callao I saw specimens of some that had been killed. I did not see the
common black rat in Peru.

The Armadillo (_Dasypus tatuay, Desm._, L.) is seldom seen. It is found
in some of the Yucca and Camote plantations. The negroes eat it, and its
flesh is said to be good.

Of wild ruminating animals there is only one on the coast: it is a kind
of Roe (_Cervus nemorivagus_, F. Cuv., the _venado_ of the natives). The
venados chiefly inhabit the brushwood along the coast; but after sunset
they visit the plantations, where they commit considerable damage. They
are smaller than our European roe, and somewhat more brown. Englishmen
at Lima go out to hunt them. The natives do not take much interest in
the chase. This animal is also met with in the coldest regions of the
Cordilleras; but it does not come down to the old forests, where the Red
Deer (_Cervus rufus_, F. Cuv.) supplies its absence.

In the woods which surround some of the plantations in the valleys of
Lima, wild boars (_Chanchos Simarones_) are occasionally found. They are
of immense size. At the plantation called the _Hacienda de Caraponga_,
one was killed, of which the head alone was an ordinary burthen for a
mule.

The number of birds in this very extensive qua