The capybara--the water-pig which is no pig--is a rudimentary sort of structure. He presents a kind of rough outline or experimental draft of a quadruped in its preliminary stages of invention. All the materials are there--more than enough, in fact--and the rough plan of their arrangement is sketched out, but there is no detail--nor, indeed, any other kind of tail--and no finish. The body (and a very liberal body, too), the hair (also liberal, and thick), the head and legs, have been put together tentatively with a shovel, and all the fine work has been omitted; indeed, the operations have never even arrived at the stage at which the tail is stuck on. The capybara's ideals, notions of life, wants and aspirations are of the rudimentary character appropriate to his figure. He has no particular objection to being tame and docile--so long as he is fed--nor any particular repugnance to being otherwise. He will eat a piece of cabbage if it is there; otherwise he gets on very well with a lump of firewood. He has a drink when the idea occurs to him, and takes it in the ordinary way as a rule, but, sometimes, under the unwonted stimulus of a brilliantly new conception, he sits in his drink as he takes it. This would appear to be his notion of humour; it is the capybara's only joke, and he never varies it in form or spirit. He is not a communicative beast, and never offers a remark to any human creature but Church, his keeper, and then it is by way of extracting something to eat. The remark is a sort of purring rattle--the rudimentary speech of an animal whose vocal organs have not been tuned. The redeeming feature in the capybara, in these days of hysteric fad, is his utter absence of "views" on any subject in the world. And he has no enthusiasms. [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration: THE RUDIMENTARY CAPYBARA.] [Illustration] [Illustration: THE GIDDY MALAYAN.]