Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

TRANSPORT OF ANIMALS. 253 <lriftecl by that current and westerly winds afford the means of transport ; and I appeal to the quotations already made from Forster's and Bougainvil]e''s works for proof that animals may be so carried. Because we do not know that there are foxes at this time upon Staten Land, it does not follow that there are none, or that they have never been there ; and as guanacoes, pumas, and foxes are now found on Eastern Tierra del Fuego, why might not foxes have been carried to Staten Land and thence to the Falklands, or, which is still more probable, drifted from Eas- tern Tierra del Fuego direct. I have heard somewhere, though I cannot recollect the authority, that a man in North America hauled a large old tree to the bank of a river in which it was floating towards the sea, and proceeded to secure it on the bank, when to his astonishment, out of a hole in the tree jumped a fine fox. Clusters of trees are often found floating, which have fallen off" a cliff, or have been carried out of a river ; and once in the ocean, they are drifted along partly by currents and partly by wind acting upon their branches or exposed surfaces. Rats and mice were probably taken to the Falklands by the earlier navigators who landed there, whose ships were often plagued with their numbers.* That they have varied from the original stock in sharpness of nose, length of tail, colour, or size, is to be expected, because we find that every animal varies more or less in outward form and appearance, in consequence of altered climate, food, or habits ; and that when a certain • In Viedma's Diary of an Expedition to Port San Julian in 1780, he says, " El Bergantin San Francisco de Paula entr6 en el riachuelo para descargarlo y dar humazo a las ratas." (The brig San Francisco de Paulo went into the creek to be unloaded and smoked, to kill the rats (or mice, ratas signifying either). In Magalhaens' voyage (1520) " Juan (a Patagonian) seeing the Spaniards throwing mice into the sea, desired he might have them for food; and those that were afterwards taken being given to him, he carried them on shore." — Burney, vol. i. p. 34. Perhaps some of those mice reached land alive, as the ships lay close to the shore. Many other vessels, however, afterwards staid some time in Port San Julian, particularly those of Drake.