of a stream, it seemed “an animal of gigantic size, nearly one metre in thickness, not very long, and with a snout like a pig, but whether it had legs or not he could not tell.” Before he could procure assistance to attack it, the strange creature had buried itself in a trench of its own making. In another instance a Minhocao seems to have undermined and drawn off a large pool. A negro woman, who went thither for water, found that the water was all gone, but saw an animal in the vicinity, “as big as a house,” moving rapidly away. This was in the Brazilian province of Parana, where some time afterward a young man had a still more remarkable adventure. He saw a pine tree fall suddenly and without any apparent cause. Hastening to the spot “he found the surrounding earth in movement, and an enormous worm-like-black animal in the middle of it, about twenty-five metres long and with two horns on its head.”
Apart from these views of the animal itself, there is proof of the existence of trench-like excavations in the South Brazilian highlands, the formation of which must be attributed to living creatures. Nature, the English scientific journal from which we have quoted the foregoing description, accepts the evidence as conclusive on this point. What, then, are the true characteristics of the animal? The width of the trenches leaves little doubt that it is large ; a small beast would hardly make a gallery underground, twelve feet wide and over a half mile long, such as was discovered in the valley of the river Cachorros. It is also tolerably certain that the Minhocao likes to live in damp places. Beyond this, the evidence relating to the animal affords great scope to the imagination.
