Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/227

 local variety of that species. Both differ much from our hare and rabbit, which belong to the same order of animals, their fur being coarse and bristly, and their ears short and broad. Their flesh is widely different in taste from that of our English Rodents. The meat of the Paca, in colour, grain, and flavour, resembles young pork; it is much drier, however, and less palatable than pork. The skin is thick, and boils down to a jelly, when it makes a capital soup with rice. Both animals live exclusively in the forests, both dry and moist, being found, perhaps, most abundantly in the ygapós and islands. When these are flooded in the wet season, they escape to the drier lands by swimming across the intervening channels. At Murucupí I saw several semi-domesticated individuals of both species, which had been caught when young, and were suffered to run freely about the houses. The Paca was not so familiar as the Cutía, which generally makes use of a hole or a box in a corner for a hiding-place, and comes out readily to be fed by children. I once saw a tame Cutía running about the woods nibbling the fruits fallen from the Inajá palm-tree (Maximiliana regia), and when I tried to catch it, instead of betaking itself to the thicket, it ran off to the house of its owners, which was about two hundred yards off. When feeding, this species sometimes sits upright, and takes its food in the fore paws like a squirrel.

The Paca and the Cutía belong to a peculiar family of the Rodent order which is confined to South America, and which connects the Rodents to the Pachydermata, the order to which the elephant, horse, and hog belong.