200 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



how he had slept, he complained that "the frogs had 

 made such a noise underneath his hammock that they 

 had kept him awake." Some Indians of the crew who 

 were folding up the hammock laughed a good deal 

 when they heard this, and being asked the reason, said, 

 still laughing, " Oh, ' tiger ' sleep with old man last 

 night." They had found under the hammock the 

 marks of where a puma had lain. The noise which 

 had kept the occupier of the hammock awake was 

 probably the purring of the puma, pleased at occupy- 

 ing the " next berth " below a man. As these Guiana 

 Indians have, in addition to the unerring eye of the 

 forest-dweller, a special liking and capacity for taming 

 animals, it can hardly be doubted that their conclu- 

 sion was correct. Such an absence of fear, and liking 

 for human society, could only be paralleled by the 

 behaviour of some domestic cats. Yet in the case of 

 the puma it can only be a survival of a primitive 

 disposition, which has already been lost in a great 

 measure by the same species in North America. 



Are we, then, to suppose that the absence of that fear 

 of man so general among even the large carnivora was 

 the rule in the primitive world ? If it was, we shall 

 have to account for the survival of man in the presence 

 of creatures which did not fear him, and possessed a 

 far more effective physical equipment for attack than 

 man possessed for defence ; for we cannot suppose 

 that the benevolent neutrality which can safely be 

 attributed to the puma was exhibited by the other 

 carnivora. The evidence that fear is not the natural 

 attitude of animals towards man is mainly of two 



