27fi 



VERTEBRATE 



INUNDATION IN GUIANA. 



flow their banks; forests, trees, shrubs, and parasitical plants seem to float upon the water. 

 Impels art- forced to take shelter in the highest trees; large lizards, agoutis, and peccari 

 quit their dens, now filled with water, and remain among the branches. Aquatic birds spring upon 

 the trees, to avoid the alligators and serpents that infest the temporary lakes. The fishes forsake 

 their ordinary food, and live upon the fruits and berries of the shrubs among which they swim: 

 the crab is found upon the trees, and the oyster multiplies in the forest. The Indian, who sun 

 from hi- canoe this confusion of earth and sea, suspends his hammock on an elevated branch, and 

 sleeps without fear in the midst of so great apparent danger. 



I rom the account we have given, it might seem that the jaguar in South America hold- unques- 

 tioned dominion over the animal creation, as does the lion in Africa and the tiger in India. It 

 has, however, one enemy, living in its own haunts, which not unfrequently makes even this tyrant 

 of the wilderness its prey. This is the boa constrictor. In the overgrown and swampy thickel 

 the tropical regions, these Berpents, in many varieties — nursed by a perpetual summer, and pam- 

 pered by an uninterrupted feast — multiply in almost countless millions, and grow to an enormous 

 size. They lie couched amid the rank herbage that cumbers the earth, or wind among the trail- 

 ing mosses that festoon the forests, or hang suspended from the boughs of the trees. Silent 

 motionless they wateh the approach of their prey. Often the stealthy jaguar comes unconsciou-K 

 within the reach of one of them, when, with the quickness of thought, it darts upon him, embrs 

 him in its folds, and hi- horn- cracking like fagots, he expires in the invincible grasp. 



The Cougar, FelU concolor, has had the honor of bearing a great variety of names. Being, 

 like the true lion, a ferocious beast, and nearly of a uniform color, it was originally called the 

 American Lion ; consequently certain European naturalists found conclusive proof in this animal 

 to sustain a favorite theory that every thing American was on an inferior scale, when compared 

 with similar products of nature in the Old World. Among the people of New England it was for-' 



