HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY 111 



by going up along some huge twisted lianas for forty or 

 fifty feet and exploring the upper branches; whereupon 

 down came three other coatis through the branches, one 

 being caught by the dogs and the other two escaping. 

 Coatis fight savagely with both teeth and claws. Miller 

 told us that he once saw one of them kill a dog. They 

 feed on all small mammals, birds, and reptiles, and even 

 on some large ones; they kill iguanas; Cherrie saw a rat- 

 tling chase through the trees, a coati following an iguana 

 at full speed. We heard the rush of a couple of tapirs, as 

 they broke away in the jungle in front of the dogs, and 

 headed, according to their custom, for the river; but we 

 never saw them. One of the party shot a bush deer — a 

 very pretty, graceful creature, smaller than our whitetail 

 deer, but kin to it and doubtless the southernmost rep- 

 resentative of the whitetail group. 



The whitetail deer — using the word to designate a group 

 of deer which can either be called a subgenus with many 

 species, or a widely spread species diverging into many 

 varieties — is the only North American species which has 

 spread down into and has outlying representatives in 

 South America. It has been contended that the species 

 has spread from South America northward. I do not 

 think so; and the specimen thus obtained furnished a 

 probable refutation of the theory. It was a buck, and 

 had just shed its small antlers. The antlers are, therefore, 

 shed at the same time as in the north, and it appears that 

 they are grown at the same time as in the north. Yet 

 this variety now dwells in the tropics south of the equator, 

 where the spring, and the breeding season for most birds, 

 comes at the time of the northern fall in September, Oc- 



