The Puma, or Lion of America. 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 been a 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. 



