In All Parts Black, And Some Spotted Animals May
Be Observed.
Capt.
Sulivan remarks, that the difference in
the prevailing colours was so obvious, that in looking for
the herds near Port Pleasant, they appeared from a long
distance like black spots, whilst south of Choiseul Sound
they appeared like white spots on the hill-sides. Capt. Sulivan
thinks that the herds do not mingle; and it is a singular
fact, that the mouse-coloured cattle, though living on the
high land, calve about a month earlier in the season that
the other coloured beasts on the lower land. It is interesting
thus to find the once domesticated cattle breaking
into three colours, of which some one colour would in all
probability ultimately prevail over the others, if the herds
were left undisturbed for the next several centuries.
The rabbit is another animal which has been introduced;
and has succeeded very well; so that they abound over large
parts of the island. Yet, like the horses, they are confined
within certain limits; for they have not crossed the central
chain of hills, nor would they have extended even so far as
its base, if, as the Gauchos informed me, small colonies has
not been carried there. I should not have supposed that
these animals, natives of northern Africa, could have existed
in a climate so humid as this, and which enjoys so little
sunshine that even wheat ripens only occasionally. It is
asserted that in Sweden, which any one would have thought
a more favourable climate, the rabbit cannot live out of
doors.
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