ome recipient of the beast's
hospitality, or an intruder upon it, is a question still undetermined;
but the latter seems the more probable, since, in the stomachs of owls
of the northern species, are frequently found prairie dog "pups;" a fact
which seems to show anything but amicable relations between these
creatures so oddly consorting.

There is yet another member of these communities, apparently quite as
much out of place--a reptile; for snakes also make their home in the
holes both of _biscacha_ and prairie dog. And in both cases the reptile
intruder is a rattlesnake, though the species is different. In these,
no doubt, the owls find their staple of food.

Perhaps the most singular habit of the _biscacha_ is its collecting
every loose article which chances to be lying near, and dragging all up
to its burrow; by the mouth of which it forms a heap, often as large as
the half of a cart-load dumped carelessly down. No matter what the
thing be--stick, stone, root of thistle, lump of indurated clay, bone,
ball of dry dung--all seem equally suitable for these miscellaneous
accumulations. Nothing can be dropped in the neighbourhood of a
_biscacha_ hole but is soon borne off, and added to its collection of
_bric-a-brac_. Even a watch which had slipped from the fob of a
traveller--as recorded by the naturalist. Darwin--was found forming
part of one; the owner, acquainted with the habits of the animal, on
missing the watch, having returned upon his route, and searched every
_biscacha_ mound along it, confident that in some one of them he would
find the missing article--as he did.

The districts frequented by these three-toed creatures, and which seem
most suitable to their habits, are those tracts of _campo_ where the
soil is a heavy loam or clay, and the vegetation luxuriant. Its
congener, the _agouti_, affects the arid sterile plains of Patagonia,
while the _biscacha_ is most met with on the fertile pampas further
north; more especially along the borders of those far-famed thickets of
tall thistles--forests they might almost be called--upon the roots of
which it is said to feed. They also make their burrows near the
_cardonales_, tracts overgrown by the cardoon; also a species of large
malvaceous plant, though quite different from the pampas thistles.

Another singular fact bearing upon the habits of the _biscacha_ may here
deserve mention. These animals are not found in the Banda Oriental, as
the country lying