400 THE JAGUAR. 



when pressed by hunger, it will attack a native village, and 

 carry off, not only fowls and other tame animals, but the 

 children, and sometimes full-grown people, whom it may 

 catch unawares. 



Darwin says, that when the* floods drive these animals to 

 diier ground, they are most dangerous ; and mentions many 

 instances of people being destroyed by them. On the Parana 

 they have been known to get on board vessels at night. He 

 heard of a man who, coming up from below when it was 

 dark, was seized on the deck by a jaguar. He escaped, how- 

 ever, with the loss of the use of an arm. At Santa Fe, two 

 padres entering, one after the other, a church into which a 

 jaguar had made its wa}^, were both killed. A third, who 

 came to see what was the matter, escaped with difficulty. 

 The beast was destroyed by being shot at from a corner of 

 the building which was unroofed. 



The gauchos say, that when wandering at night, it is fre- 

 quently followed by foxes yelping at its heels. If such is 

 the case, it is a curious coincidence with the fact, generally 

 affirmed, that jackals accompany the East Indian tiger. 



The jaguar often leaves marks on the bark of trees, which 

 it scrapes for the purpose of tearing off the rugged parts of 

 its claws ; a habit common also to the puma, as Darwin says 

 he frequently found in Patagonia scores so deep on the hard 

 soil, that no other animal could have made them. 



Brett mentions several instances which came under his 

 notice of human beings being killed by jaguars. A Carib 

 Indian had gone into the forest to procure touari, — the inner 

 bark of the sapucaya-nut tree, of the thin papery layers of 

 which the Indians form the envelopes of their cigarettes. 

 While employed in cutting off the long strips of the bark, on 



