THE Tapeti seems to be very similar to, and, perhaps, a variety of that of the rabbit or hare. It is found at Brasil, and other parts of America. It resembles the European rabbit in figure, and the hare by its size and colour, being only somewhat browner. Its ears are very long, and of the same shape as those of the hare. Its hair is red on the forehead, and whitish on the throat; some have a circle of white hair round the neck; others are all white on the throat, breast, and belly. They have black eyes, and whiskers like the rabbit, but they have no tail. The tapeti resembles the hare in its manner of living, fecundity, and quality of its flesh, which is excellent food. It lives in the fields, or woods, like the hare, and does not burrow like the rabbit. The animal of New Spain, mentioned by Fernandes by the name of citli, seems to be the same as the tapeti of Brasil; and possibly both are only varieties of our European hares, which have passed by the north from one continent to the other.
THERE are still some animals which might be added to those in our preceding account, but they are so badly indicated as to be very uncertain; and I rather chose to confine myself to what is known with some degree of certainty, than deliver myself up to conjectures, and treat of fabulous for existing beings. Notwithstanding this limitation it will easily be perceived, that our HISTORY OF QUADRUPEDS is as complete as could be expected. It comprehends a great number of animals not observed or described before, and not any of those which were before known, have we omitted to take notice of in the course of this work.
The preceding account, though composed of twenty one-articles, yet really contains only nine or ten distinct species, for all the rest are only varieties. The white bear is only a variety of the common kind; the Tartary cow of the bison; the Guinea and Cape Verd hogs of the common hog, &c. therefore, by adding these ten species to about one hundred and eighty before spoken of, the whole number of quadrupeds, whose existence is certain and well ascertained, does not amount to more than two hundred species on the surface of the known world.
[SUPPLEMENT TO THE QUADRUPEDS.]
THE CRAB-EATER.
THIS animal has been called Crab-eater, or Crab-dog, from his principally living upon crabs. Some travellers have compared him to the dog and the fox, but he has much more affinity to the opossums, than whom, however, he is much larger, and the female does not carry her young in a pouch under her belly; therefore the crab-eater appears to be a different species, from any animal heretofore described.
There is a skin of one of these animals preserved in the royal cabinet, which when transmitted to us was very young; it was a male, and measured from the nose to the origin of the tail seventeen inches; the tail rather more than fifteen inches and a half, and which was of a greyish colour, scaly, and naked, gradually tapering to the point. He was about six inches and a half high. He was very short, and at a distance much resembled a terrier, his head being considerably like that of a dog. His eyes were small, the edges of the eyebrows black, and above the eyes there are hairs more than an inch long: he has similar hairs near his ears, and his whiskers were an inch and a half long, and black. He had a large crooked canine tooth on each side the upper jaw, which reached below the under. His ears were brown, naked, and round at the ends. His hair on the body woolly, of a dirty white at the bottom, and dark brown at the ends, which is intermixed with long coarse black hairs; the latter increase in length upon the thighs and spine of the back, upon the last of which they are so long as to form a kind of mane from the middle of it to the tail. On the sides and belly the hair is of a yellowish white, inclining more to yellow on the shoulders, thighs, neck, breast and head, mixed in some places with brown; and the legs and feet of a blackish brown. There are five toes on each foot; they are a little bent like those of a rat, the thumb alone being straight; the latter on the hind feet is broad, thick, and at a distance from the toes, as in apes, but on the fore-feet it is not separate from them; and the thumbnails are flat, while those on the other toes are crooked, and extend beyond the points.