Volume 1

The gardens and menagerie of the Zoological Society delineated / Pub., with the sanction of the council, under the superintendence of the secretary and vice-secretary of the society.

  • Zoological Society of London
Date:
1830-31
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gardens and menagerie of the Zoological Society delineated / Pub., with the sanction of the council, under the superintendence of the secretary and vice-secretary of the society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    naturalist, with the exception of the Abbe Molina, a native of Chili, who has written expressly on the Natural History of that country, had seen an entire specimen, living or dead; and the description given in his work added little of truth and much of error to the information that was to he derived from an inspection of the skins themselves in the imperfect state in which they are sent into the market. Still his account con¬ tains many particulars relative to the habits of the animal, which are not to be met with elsewhere, and we shall therefore extract it entire; first, however, referring to such scanty notices in the works of former writers as appear to have been founded on original observation. The earliest account of the Chinchilla with which we have met is contained in Father Joseph Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies, published at Barcelona, in Spanish, in the year 1591. From an English translation of this work, printed at London in 1604, we extract the following sentence, which is all that relates to the animal in question. “ The Chinchilles is an other kind of small beasts, like squirrels, they have a woonderfull smoothe and soft skinne, which they weare as a healthfull thing to comfort the stomacke, and those parts that have neede of a moderate heate;” [as most “beasts” do; but the concluding part of the extract shows that this is spoken of the human natives, and not of the poor Chinchillas themselves;] “ they make coverings and rugges of the haire of these Chinchilles, which are found on the Sierre of Peru.” We find these animals again mentioned, and nearly to the same purpose, in “ The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knight, in his Voyage into the South Sea, An. Dom. 1593,” published at London in