44$ Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XX, 



prey to the nearest forest to feast on it at their leisure. I never 

 heard of them throwing a dead animal on their shoulders as 

 tigers are said to do, and I fancy none of the cats could per- 

 form that feat. But the strength of the jaguar is sufficiently 

 shown by its dragging large animals. In Brazil, my wife and 

 I once followed a track on which a cow had been dragged ; it 

 was fully half a mile long, at first over open land and then in 

 tangled forest. The carcass was found untouched, and our 

 hunters subsequently shot the jaguar, which was hidden near 

 by; it was not an unusually large one. . . -< 



" It is commonly said that jaguars will not attack a sleeping 

 man, but will wait until he moves. A Brazilian engineer of 

 my acquaintance, while waiting for a messenger, went to 

 sleep in the forest; the messenger, on his return, found a 

 jaguar 'smelling' of the sleeper, as he reported; the animal 

 made off, but its tracks corroborated the story. I myself have 

 found large jaguar tracks close to the hammock in which I 

 had slept, a little away from the camp circle. 



" Like most cats, they seem to fear a light at night, perhaps 

 because they do not understand it. On one occasion while 

 mothing in the mountain forest near Santa Marta, I carried a 

 lantern about to examine my sugar baits; next morning we 

 found jaguar tracks following mine for half a mile. At this 

 place jaguars were frequently heard moving through the 

 shrubbery, quite near our camp ; and a month after we had 

 left it, a visit to the place showed that a jaguar had occupied 

 the improvised bed which my wife and I had slept in. 



"This and other cats, as well as wild and tame dogs, are 

 very fond of mangoes; and during the mango season they 

 come around the settlements to eat the fruit. They often 

 pass over several miles of country in their hunting excursions ; 

 in fact, it is doubtful if they have settled homes except during 

 the breeding season. On one occasion our hunters tracked a 

 jaguar for fully ten miles, on a high mountain. 



"The male remains with the female while the cubs are 

 young, and this, I believe, is the rule with all American cats; 

 but he makes long hunting excursions while his mate re- 

 mains near her cubs. Jaguars live principally on deer, pacas, 



