THE GUINEA PIG.
Waterville, Kan.
Will you please tell me, through your department, the nature and origin of the Guinea pigs? Where do they come from, and how often in a year do they breed?
“Magnolia.”
Answer.—Properly speaking, the “Guinea pig” (cava caboya) is not a pig, but a rodent closely related to the restless cavy of Uraguay and Brazil, belonging to the same natural order as the rat and beaver. Like the cavidae, it burrows in the ground, and feeds upon fruits and herbs. Its chief value consists in its beauty, which may be described thus: A white fur, patched with red and black, covering a little animal a foot long and weighing from a pound to a pound and a half—a creature inoffensive and helpless in the extreme, exceedingly restless, and not remarkably intelligent. It is supposed that this cavy was carried from South America to Europe in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and there domesticated; and that its name is a corruption of Guiana pig. It is very prolific, beginning to breed at the age of two months, and rearing a brood of four to twelve three times a year.
DARIUS AND THE SCYTHIANS.
Geneva, Ill.
In “Gibbon’s Rome,” Vol. III., chap. 26, page 13, we find the following foot-note: “When Darius advanced into the Moldavian desert, between the Danube and the Niester, the King of the Scythians sent him a mouse, a frog, a bird, and five arrows; a tremendous allegory!” What did this allegory signify?