36 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 



Peruvian, and " cougar " is a shortening, through 

 the French, 1 of a native Brazilian term ; while 

 " catamount," now rarely heard, is borrowed from 

 Europe, and is confusing, because often applied to 

 the lynx. 



As everybody recognizes the advantage to the 

 animal of the inconspicuousness of its plain reddish 

 coat, and recalls at once the similar case of the 

 lion, whose tawny hide harmonizes well with the 

 sere grass of the South African karoo, or with 

 the arid plains of the Sahara, Arabia, or Turkestan, 

 it is customary to say hurriedly that this is the 

 outcome of a beneficent process of natural selec- 

 tion. The same persons will tell you that the 

 elaborate spotting of the jaguar is another striking 

 example of the beneficence of the same law, acting 

 within a different sphere, pointing out that the 

 spots of its yellow hide harmonize so exactly with 

 the dappling of the sunlight as it falls through the 

 trembling leaves as to make the beast invisible to 

 an unsuspecting eye. They may be right in these 

 deductions, but there are certain difficulties in 

 making the same rule apply to both, or, still more, 

 to the case of the puma. 



The jaguar confines his career to forests and 



1 Bates, in "The Naturalist on the Amazons," explains in a foot- 

 note on sassu-ardna, " false deer," that " the old zoologist Marcgrave 

 called the puma the cuguacurana, possibly (the c's being soft or f~) 

 a misspelling of sassu-ardna ; hence the name couguar employed 

 by French zoologists." Alfred Russel Wallace ("Travels on the 

 Amazon ") spells it sasurana and attributes it to the Lingoa Geral. 



