When fully grown, the agouti is rather more than eighteen inches long, and in general color it is olive brown. But the hair of the hinder quarters, which is very much longer than that of the rest of the body, is golden brown, while the middle line of the lower part of the body is almost white. THE CAPYBARA Few people, on seeing a capybara for the first time, would take it to be a rodent. It looks much more like a wild pig, for it has a very heavily built body, which almost touches the ground as it waddles along, short, stiff, bristly hair, and great hoof-like feet. Indeed, it is sometimes called the water-hog. Yet we only have to look at its front teeth to see that it really is a rodent after all. The capybara is a native of South America, and is generally found in the damp, marshy ground near the banks of the larger rivers. It is a good swimmer, and always makes for the water when alarmed. It is a good diver, too, and can easily remain below the surface for seven or eight minutes without requiring to breathe, so that if it can once plunge into the river it is safe from almost any foe. When fully grown, the capybara is about four feet long, and weighs nearly one hundred pounds. In fact, it is the largest of all the rodent animals. In color it is reddish brown above, and brownish yellow beneath, and it is further remarkable for having no tail at all. HARES AND RABBITS The hares and rabbits, of which our account is taken from "The Life of Mammals," by Ernest Ingersoll, form a compact family of some sixty species, scattered in all divisions of the globe except Australasia and Madagascar; but only one species occurs in South America, and the family is most numerous in northerly regions, where these animals form an important food resource for man and beast. All are much alike in the long, high-haunched hind legs, which give great leaping and dodging power; tall, erectile ears; divided upper lip; short scut; and grizzled gray-brown coat, with various specific markings of white and black. The only exceptional one is the "hispid" hare of Northeastern India, which has small eyes, bristly short ears, short hind legs, and much the manner of a rabbit. The term rabbit has wholly replaced "hare" in America, because the common small hare of the eastern United States, quickly seen by the first English settlers, looked to them more like the rabbit they had known at home than like their bigger hare; and they ignored the difference in habits as they did so many other facts in their careless naming of the animals of the New World after those of Europe. It must always be remembered that the first Pilgrims, Puritans, and southern "adventurers" were mainly from cities, and knew little of rural things, to which ignorance, by the way, they owed most of their early misfortunes in the colonies.