II 
THE FATHER OF GAME 
I HAVE frequently noticed in menageries a start 
of surprise in the eyes of persons before a puma’s 
cage, when they learned that this splendid cat was 
American. 
It somehow informs our prosaic northern forests 
with a foreign, romantic, and adventurous spirit, 
to find such a denizen in them, for pictures of the 
lion, tiger, and leopard so fill our imaginations that 
all large and fierce beasts seem necessarily tropical. 
That, however, is by no means the fact. Even in 
America the jaguar wanders north to the Indian 
Territory — or once did—and south into Patagonia, 
while the puma is to be found from Canada to 
Cape Horn. Indeed, the wonder is that any natural 
barriers, less than wide spaces of water, restrict 
the range of these powerful animals. What pre- 
vented the jaguar, able to live along the western 
bank of the lower Mississippi, from spreading east- 
ward, at least throughout the South Atlantic States? 
Yet we have no record that he ever did so, although 
“moving accidents of flood” must again and again 
have placed individuals and pairs on the eastern 
p 33 
