246 THE AGTJARA WOLVES. 



are more those of jackals than of foxes, but their 

 activity does not cease with daylight; they retire 

 only to repose when the sun is strong. Several can 

 be sufficiently tamed to accompany their masters to 

 hunt in the forest, without however being able to 

 undergo much fatigue; for, when they find the 

 sport not to their liking, they return home to await 

 the return of the sportsmen. In domesticity they 

 are excessive thieves, and go to prowl in the forest. 

 There is a particular and characteristic instinct 

 about them to steal and secrete objects that attract 

 their attention, without being excited by any well 

 ascertained motive. All subsist upon the usual 

 food of the wild canines, but with the addition that 

 they eat also fish, crabs, limpets, lizards, toads, ser- 

 pents, and insects. They are in general silent and 

 often dumb animals ; the cry of some is seldom and 

 but faintly heard in the night, and in domestication 

 others learn a kind of barking. None appear to be 

 gregarious, but several are occasionally encountered 

 in families. Although in company with man, the 

 domesticated will eagerly join in the chace of the 

 jaguar, we have never heard that they are in the 

 same state of hostility towards felinae as are their 

 congeners in Asia and Africa. The native Indians 

 who have domestic dogs of European origin invari- 

 ably use the Spanish term perro^ and greatly pro- 

 mote the increase of the breed in preference to theii 

 own, which they consider to be derived entirely, or 

 with a cross, from the Aguaras of the woods ; and 

 by this name of Aguara it is plain, throughout al- 



