THE COUGAR. I97 



the latter climbs like a cat, the cougar leaps at one spring into the 

 branches. All his movements are light and powerful; he can easily 

 clear a distance of six yards. His eyes are large and tranquil, without 

 any expression of wildness ; and although he can see better by night 

 than by day, the sunlight does not dazzle him. His sense of hearing is 

 very sharp, and when hunger calls, his courage is great. All the weaker 

 quadrupeds dread his attacks ; even the agile monkeys fall victims to his 

 appetite. He steals, cat-like, up to his prey, and then makes his spring ; 

 if he fails, he, unlike the cats, pursues it by long leaps for some distance. 

 A traveler observed one engaged in the chase of a monkey. While he 

 was waiting to get a shot at a Capucin monkey, the whole tribe of apes 

 suddenly set up a terrible scream and took to flight, swinging from bough 

 to bough and tree to tree, betraying at the same time every mark of the 

 wildest terror. A cougar was after them ; he took leaps of nearly seven 

 yards from tree to tree, and crept with incredible skill through the climb- 

 ing plants and intertwined boughs of the Brazilian forest. 



When his prey is caught, the cougar bites the throat and sucks the 

 blood, and then eats a portion of the victim, burying the rest in the sand 

 or under leaves. He is very destructive, and hence is everywhere pui"- 

 sued with vigor. The Guachos of the Pampas are expert in destroying 

 him by the lasso or the bolas. One of our own sportsmen said that he 

 always ran away from a grizzly, but that painters were of no account. 

 If the traveler faces round on the animal and looks it steadily in the face, 

 it always retreats. Although the cougar or painter is not an object of 

 personal dread to the settler, he is a pestilent neighbor to the farmer, 

 committing sad havoc among his flocks and herds, and acting with such 

 consummate craft, that it can seldom be arrested in the act of destruction 

 or precluded" from achieving it. No less than fifty sheep have fallen vic- 

 tims to the panther in a single night. It is not, however, the lot of every 

 puma to reside in the neighborhood of such easy prey as pigs, sheep, and 

 poultry, and the greater number of these animals are forced to depend 

 for their subsistence on their own success in chasing or surprising the 

 various animals on which they feed. As' is the case with the jaguar, the 

 cougar is specially fond of the capybara and the peccary, and makes a 

 meal on many smaller deer than even the latter animal. 



The cougar is a good swimmer, and can cross from the mainland to 

 Terra del Fuego, and was seen swimming out to one of the Florida Keys. 

 In Florida, authentic reports tell that children have been carried off by 



