Lhe Puma, or Lion of Ameria. 51 
beast in the sand, in a direction towards the bell 
tent. The impression was deep and plain, of a 
large round foot well furnished with claws. Upon 
acquainting the people in the tent with the circum- 
stances of our story, we found that they had been 
visited by the same unwelcome guest.” 
Mr. Andrew Murray, in his work on the Geogra- 
phical Distribution of Mammals, gives the Straits 
of Magellan as the extreme southern limit of the 
puma’s range, and in discussing the above passage 
from Byron he writes: ‘“ This reference, however, 
gives no support to the notion of the animal alluded 
to having been a puma. . . . The description of the 
footprints clearly shows that the animal could not 
have beena puma. None of the cat tribe leave any 
trace of a claw in their footprints. . .. The dogs, 
on the other hand, leave a very well-defined claw- 
mark. . . . Commodore Byron and his party had 
therefore suffered a false alarm. The creature 
which had disturbed them was, doubtless, one of the 
harmless domestic dogs of the natives.” 
The assurance that the bold hardy adventurer 
and his men suffered a false alarm, and were thrown 
into a great state of excitement at the appearance of 
one of the wretched domestic dogs of the Fuegians, 
with which they were familiar, comes charmingly, 
it must be said, from a closet naturalist, who 
surveys the world of savage beasts from his London 
study. He apparently forgets that Commodore 
Byron lived in a time when the painful accuracy 
and excessive minuteness we are accustomed to was 
not expected from a writer, whenever he happened 
to touch on any matters connected with zoology. 
E 
