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Updated: June 27, 2025
There is an inexpressible charm in thus living in the open air. The evening was calm and still; the shrill noise of the mountain bizcacha, and the faint cry of a goatsucker, were occasionally to be heard. Besides these, few birds, or even insects, frequent these dry, parched mountains. In the morning we climbed up the rough mass of greenstone which crowns the summit.
The plain here looked like that around Buenos Ayres; the turf being short and bright green, with beds of clover and thistles, and with bizcacha holes. I was very much struck with the marked change in the aspect of the country after having crossed the Salado. From a coarse herbage we passed on to a carpet of fine green verdure.
The water had been turned into their dwellings by means of trenches, and as the occupants endeavoured to make their escape at the other end they were pounced upon by men and dogs; the prairie-owls meanwhile hovering disconsolately overhead. Two of the gentlemen of our party each managed to purchase a living bizcacha, which was then wrapped up in a handkerchief and conveyed home.
A gentleman told Mr Darwin, that having dropped his watch one dark night, he was unable to find it; but returning the following morning, and searching the neighbourhood of every bizcacha burrow along the line of road, he at length discovered it among a heap of rubbish.
It is fond of occupying the burrows of the bizcacha when it finds them, but when they do not exist it is compelled to make a house for itself. It here stores away the food it does not require for present use. When eating, it sits up like the squirrel, using its fore-paws to convey the food to its mouth. Its hind-legs being very long, it leaps over the ground at considerable speed.
Waterhouse, of all Rodents, the bizcacha is most nearly related to Marsupials; but in the points in which it approaches this order, its relations are general, and not to any one marsupial species more than to another. As the points of affinity of the bizcacha to Marsupials are believed to be real and not merely adaptive, they are due on my theory to inheritance in common.
Therefore we must suppose either that all Rodents, including the bizcacha, branched off from some very ancient Marsupial, which will have had a character in some degree intermediate with respect to all existing Marsupials; or that both Rodents and Marsupials branched off from a common progenitor, and that both groups have since undergone much modification in divergent directions.
It appears also, from the number shot by Captain Wood in one day at Port Desire, that they must have been considerably more abundant there formerly than at present. Where the Bizcacha lives and makes its burrows, the Agouti uses them; but where, as at Bahia Blanca, the Bizcacha is not found, the Agouti burrows for itself.
The careless horseman on the Pampas soon becomes disagreeably acquainted with the existence of a little rodent the bizcacha into whose closely-set burrows should his horse step, he will to a certainty find himself pitched over his steed's head. It closely resembles a rabbit, but with larger gnawing teeth and a longer tail. It has only three toes behind, like the agouti.
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