424 THE STORY OF THE JAGUAR. 



started the jaguar in an outlying district of the pampas, and it had taken 

 refuge in a dense clump of dry weeds. Though they could see it, it was 

 impossible to throw the lasso over its head, and after vainly trying to dis- 

 lodge it, they at length set fire to the reeds. Still it refused to stir, but lay 

 with head erect, fiercely glaring at them through the fiames. Finally it 

 disappeared from sight in the black smoke; and when the fire had burnt 

 itself out, it was found dead and charred in the same spot. Livingstone 

 relates how one of the harnessed antelopes of South Africa will lie close 

 among burning reeds until its horns and hair are singed; both these instances 

 being examples of the paralyzing effects of fear, analogous to that which 

 causes a wolf when caught in a pit to lie perfectly still, even under the inflic- 

 tion of severe blows, as if simulating death. 



The jaguar is commonly called tiger by European residents of South 



America. 



Next to monkeys, peccaries are a favorite article of diet with the jaguar, 

 but he finds scarcely less difficulty in picking up a peccary than in knocking 

 down a ^lonkey. For the little, active, sharp^tusked peccary is more swinishly 

 dull than is usual even with its swinish relatives, and, being too thick-headed 

 to understand danger, is a very terrible antagonist tO' man or beast. It seems 

 to care nothing for size, w^eapons, or strength, but launches itself as fearlessly 

 on a jaguar or an armed man as on a rabbit or a child. So', unless the jaguar 

 can quietly snap up a straggler, he has a small chance with even a small herd 

 of these warlike little pigs. 



But it meets a foeman where we should least expect it — in the toothless 

 ant-eater, or ant-lion, the Tamanduhuasu. When the fierce feline springs upon 

 it, the long muzzled excavator throws itself on its back to meet its antagonist 

 with the arms furnished by nature, and as" the jaguar descends the ant-eater 

 closes upon its assailant with its four terrible sets of claws, which tear to the 

 very vitals, and if the jaguar's teeth sink deep into the unprotected throat of 

 the Tamandu, it purchases victory only with its life; both perish together; 

 and the Tapuyas Indians in Brazil say that they often find the skeletons of the 

 two interlaced, so as tO' show how they perished. 



