36 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 
Peruvian, and “cougar” is a shortening, through 
the French,! of a native Brazilian term; while 
“catamount,” now rarely heard, is borrowed from 
Europe, and is confusing, because often applied to 
the lynx. 
As everybody recognizes the advantage to the 
animal of the inconspicuousness of its plain reddish 
coat, and recalls at once the similar case of the 
lion, whose tawny hide harmonizes well with the 
sere grass of the South African karoo, or with 
the arid plains of the Sahara, Arabia, or Turkestan, 
it is customary to say hurriedly that this is the 
outcome of a beneficent process of natural selec- 
tion. The same persons will tell you that the 
elaborate spotting of the jaguar is another striking 
example of the beneficence of the same law, acting 
within a different sphere, pointing out that the 
spots of its yellow hide harmonize so exactly with 
the dappling of the sunlight as it falls through the 
trembling leaves as to make the beast invisible to 
an unsuspecting eye. They may be right in these 
deductions, but there are certain difficulties in 
making the same rule apply to both, or, still more, 
to the case of the puma. 
The jaguar confines his career to forests and 
1 Bates, in “The Naturalist on the Amazons,” explains in a foot- 
note on sass¢-ardna, “ false deer,” that “ the old zodlogist Marcgrave 
called the puma the cuguacurana, possibly (the c’s being soft or ¢) 
a misspelling of sass#-ardna, hence the name couguar employed 
by French zodlogists." Alfred Russel Wallace (“Travels on the 
Amazon") spells it sesuvana and attributes it to the Lingoa Geral, 
