HISTORY OF THE JAGUAR 111 



difference of opinion, however, as to the tone of 

 his voice and to the extent he employs it, some 

 insisting that the great cat is decidedly silent. He 

 may be quiet or noisy, depending on locality, 

 season, weather and other conditions which may 

 or may not prompt him to give voice to his sav- 

 ageness. The English naturalist, Charles Water- 

 ton, who spent ten years in the wilds of Guiana, 

 wrote, "During the night the jaguars roared and 

 grumbled in the forests as though the world was 

 going wrong with them." That the jaguar can 

 roar, and often does so with violence, there can 

 be no doubt, for I have heard his coughing roar 

 both in the open and in captivity, and under all 

 modulations his voice is a coarse undertone, and 

 once heard cannot be easily forgotten. 



Jaguars are indiscriminate feeders and their 

 appetite is a ravenous one; so long as an animal 

 has blood in its body, whether it be red or white, 

 it does not come amiss to their taste. From bugs 

 and lizards to all quadrupeds that inhabit their 

 range they prey upon them promiscuously, in- 

 cluding domestic animals, such as horses, cattle, 

 and especially calves and dogs. In some sections 

 of South America they seem to subsist largely 

 on that large rodent, the capybara, now the only 

 remaining representative of that otherwise ex- 



