Some of our officers likewise saw a herd drinking the briny fluid from Salina, near Cape Blanca. I imagine, in several parts of the country, if they do not drink salt water they drink none at all. In the middle of the day they frequently roll in the dust in saucer-shaped hollows.... The Guanacoes appear to have favourite spots for dying in. On the banks of the St. Cruz the ground was actually white with bones in certain circumscribed places, which were generally bushy, and all near the river. On one such spot I counted between ten and twenty heads, some gnawed, as if by beasts of prey.” The Domestic Llama resembles its wild ancestor in most respects. Its colour may, however, be variegated, or even white. Its woolly coat is longer, but not so fine, and when it is removed by shearing the animal is conspicuously spotted. The VICUNA is a smaller animal of a light lion-brown colour, with a short and hairy face; its neck is lengthy, as in its allies; its height about two feet six inches. Its wool is particularly fine, and has been much employed, undyed, as a material for clothing. It is active and spiteful, inhabiting a region higher and therefore colder than the Huanaco. The Alpaca is its domestic form, with thicker and much darker wool, as well as shorter limbs. Its colour is often nearly black, or black varied with white or brown. The manufacture of alpaca stuffs dates from the year 1836, when Mr. (afterwards Sir) Titus Salt commenced weaving the unusually long-haired wool, which at the time found no sale in the markets on account of its not being suited to the existing combing apparatus. Since that period alpaca has been much employed as a fabric, possibly to be again replaced in great measure by the sheep wool of the Australian and other British colonies. FOSSIL RUMINANTIA. The study of fossil forms throws as much light upon the development of existing types of Ruminantia as it does in the case of the Perissodactyla. Until the last of the three great geologic epochs none have been found; whilst in the Tertiary strata from Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene formations, numerous species are known, resembling existing types more closely as they are discovered in the more recently deposited strata. As might be anticipated from what has been said above, and as is indicated in the table of classification of the Artiodactyla on page 336, Vol. II., the oldest forms of cloven-hoofed Mammalia must have been intermediate in structure between the Pigs and Ruminants. Such a creature existed at the close of the Eocene period in _Chœropotamus_, discovered first by the illustrious Cuvier in the palæontologically most interesting gypsum beds at Montmartre. Another specimen has also been found near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight. The creature was pig-like in size, and in the tuberculated structure of its grinders, the parts, together with the lower jaw, alone discovered as yet. [Illustration: SKELETON OF THE IRISH ELK.]