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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.
There the biscacha, or viscacha as it is indifferently spelt plays pretty much the same part as the rabbit in our northern lands. It is, however, a much larger animal, and of a quite different species or genus the lagostoinus trichodactylus.
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.
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.
If we were to leave the cave, and seek for it anywhere outside, we'd find the ground soaking wet, and, like enough, every one of us get laid up with a spell of rheumatics. Here we'll be as snug as a biscacha in its hole; and, I take it, will sleep undisturbed by the squalling of any more cats." As Cypriano makes no further opposition, it is decided that they remain in the cave till morning.
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.
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.
This shares occupation with the biscacha, as does the other, an allied species, with the prairie dog.
I pass in silence the two large families which include the jerboa, the chinchilla, the biscacha, and the tushkan, or underground hare of South Russia, though all these small rodents might be taken as excellent illustrations of the pleasures derived by animals from social life.
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