respond, but walked quietly on, until the puma suddenly desisted and
re-entered the forest. This gentleman says that, until the publication
of Mr. Hudson's book, he had always remained under the impression that
that particular puma must have been insane."

MUSIC AND DANCING IN NATURE.

I have found among my papers the following mislaid note on the subject
of sportive displays of mammalians, which should have been used on page
281, where the subject is briefly treated:--Most mammalians are
comparatively silent and live on the ground, and not having the power to
escape easily, which birds have, and being more persecuted by man, they
do not often disport themselves unrestrainedly in his presence; it is
difficult to watch any wild animal without the watcher's presence being
known or suspected. Nevertheless, their displays are not so rare as we
might imagine. I have more than once detected species, with which I was,
or imagined myself to be, well acquainted, disporting themselves in a
manner that took me completely by surprise. While out tinamou shooting
one day in autumn, near my own home in La Plata, I spied a troop of
about a dozen weasels racing madly about over a vizcacha village--the
mound and group of pit-like burrows inhabited by a community of
vizcachas. These weasels were of the large common species, Galictis
barbara, about the size of a cat; and were engaged in a pastime
resembling a complicated dance, and so absorbed were they on that
occasion that they took no notice of me when I walked up to within nine
or ten yards of them, and stood still to watch the performance. They
were all swiftly racing about and leaping over the pits, always doubling
quickly back when the limit of the mound was reached, and although
apparently carried away with excitement, and crossing each other's
tracks at all angles, and this so rapidly and with so many changes of