Paraguay may be called the Paradise of mice and dormice. From the number of oxen daily slain, such abundance of offal is every where to be had, that dormice, which in our country can hardly find anything to eat, here feast day and night, which, of course, must wonderfully increase their numbers. At Buenos-Ayres, to my astonishment, I beheld dormice, larger than our squirrels, issue by crowds out of the old walls into the court, about sun-set. At Cordoba in Tucuman, an ox, stripped of its hide and entrails, but entire in every other respect, was suspended from a beam in the clerk's office. The lay-brothers, on entering the office, beheld the ox entirely covered with dormice, and drew near to see how much they had devoured in the night. On handling the flesh, they found it completely hollowed, and three hundred dormice lurking within. Upon hearing this, I conceived such a disgust of meat gnawed by these animals, that for two days I carefully avoided the eating-room, and contented myself with bread alone. The fruit of my abstinence was, that the meat was thenceforward kept cleaner, and in a more appropriate place. An innumerable host of dormice not unfrequently came thronging from the southern parts of Buenos-Ayres, filled the fields, garners, and houses of Tucuman, and laid waste every thing. They swam across rivers without fear. They left the immense tract of plain country through which they took their way beaten and pressed as if by waggons. The Paraguayrian countrymen, frightened by their multitudes, chose rather to quit their huts, which were exposed on all sides, than take up arms against the foe. Nor should you imagine the Paraguayrian dormice are fond of nothing but beef; they delight in human flesh, for they frequently bite you when you are sound asleep, and that with no sluggish tooth. Moreover, there is no kind of trash which they will not steal and hide in their store-houses, to serve either for food or bed. They tear the silken markers out of the prayer-books to make their nests. They run off with aprons, bandages, stockings, linen and woollen articles of every kind, carrying them to their holes for bed-clothes and cushions. These troublesome pilferers not only commit daily thefts upon the inhabitants, but frequently set fire to the houses themselves. For they carry away burning tallow candles in their mouths, and in hastening to their caves, often set fire to the cottages of the Spanish peasants. They occasioned us much trouble in the colony of the Rosary. A light was forced to be kept up at night there on several accounts. When tallow was not to be had, I used oil expressed from cows' feet for this purpose. Almost every night the dormice snatched up the iron plate with the burning wick, in order to suck the oil when it cooled. To restrain their audacity, it was found necessary to bind the plate of the match to the lamp with a little brass chain, a weight of iron being added.