254 THE LOG OF THE SUN 



Many names of animals are adapted from words 

 in the ancient language of the natives in whose 

 country the creatures were first discovered. 

 Puma, jaguar, tapir, and peccary (from paquires) 

 are all names from South American Indian lan- 

 guages. The coyote and ocelot were called coyotl 

 and ocelotl by the Mexicans long before Cortes 

 landed on their shores. Zebra, gorilla, and chim- 

 panzee are native African words, and orang-utan 

 is Malay, meaning Man of the Woods. Cheetah 

 is from some East Indian tongue, as is tahr, the 

 name of the wild goat of the Himalayas. Gnu is 

 from the Hottentots, and giraffe from the Arabic 

 zaraf. Aoudad, the Barbary wild sheep, is the 

 French form of the Moorish name audad. 



The native Indians of our own country are pass- 

 ing rapidly, and before many years their race may 

 be extinct, but their musical, euphonious names 

 of the animals they knew so well, often pleased the 

 ear of the early settlers, and in many instances 

 will be a lasting memorial as long as these forest 

 creatures of our United States survive. 



Thus, moose is from the Indian word mouswah f 

 meaning wood-eater; skunk from seganku, an 

 Algonquin term; wapiti, in the Cree language, 

 meant white deer, and was originally applied to 

 the Rocky Mountain goat, but the name is now 

 restricted to the American elk. Caribou is also 

 an Indian word ; opossum is from possowne^ and 



