THE JAGUAR. 45 
mistake in which he has been followed by Pennant and 
others, and with which the writings of zoologists are 
more or less infected even up to the present day. What 
the Panther of the ancients actually was, or whether 
there exists any real difference between it and the 
Leopard, is a much disputed question, into which we 
have neither space nor inclination to enter: certain it is 
that it could not possibly have been the present animal, 
which has never been found out of the limits of America; 
and that Buffon himself had no idea, while he was figuring 
the latter, that the specimen before him was not a native 
of Africa or the Kast. The name of Jaguar is corruptedly 
derived from the Brazilian appellation of the animal, to 
which the Portuguese have given the name of Onca; 
another blunder, for the Ounce of the Old World is now 
universally allowed to be identical with the Leopard, and 
with the latter we have already shown that it is impossible 
that the American species can be conjoined. 
Like the Cats already described, to whom, however, he 
is much inferior in the suppleness and elasticity of his 
motions, the Jaguar makes his solitary haunt in the 
recesses of the forest, especially in the neighbourhood of 
large rivers, which he swims with the greatest dexterity. 
Of the extent of this faculty, as well as of his extraor- 
dinary strength, some judgment may be formed from a 
circumstance related by D’Azara, which fell partly under 
that traveller’s personal observation; namely, that a 
Jaguar, after having attacked and destroyed a horse, 
carried the body of his victim for about sixty paces to 
the bank of a broad and deep river, over which he swam 
with his prey, and then dragged it into the adjoining 
wood. According to M. Sonnini he is as expert at 
