NAMES FOR THE PUMA 
The earliest visitors to this continent mistook the skins they 
saw in the hands of the Indians for those of true lions, or rather 
of lionesses, for they missed the mane. Our “mountain lion” 
is a survival of this, strengthened by the fact that the Spanish- 
Copyright, N. Y. Zodlogical Society. Sanborn, Phot. 
THE AMERICAN PUMA, OR MOUNTAIN LION. 
speaking people from California to Cape Horn still say Jeon. 
In New England, however, a worse error took its place, giving 
it the name panther, or “painter,” as Natty Bumppo and 
his tribe pronounced it. “Puma” is Peruvian, and the best 
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