A PUMA FAMILY 
there are no caves or rocks, “the lair of the cougar is generally 
in a very dense thicket, or in a cane brake. It is a rude sort of 
bed of sticks, weeds, leaves, and grasses or mosses, and where 
the canes arch over it, as they are evergreen, their long, pointed 
leaves turn the rain at all seasons of the year.” 
The young are born as early as February in the Tropics, 
but in the North considerably later, after a gestation of about 
ninety-five days. Four or five kittens may come at a birth, 
but usually fewer, and more than two rarely survive long. At 
first they are spotted and the tail is ringed, which led some early 
writers into declaring them half-bred jaguars! But any coun- 
tryman could have told them their mistake, and that, as in the 
similar case of lion babies, these markings would mostly dis- 
appear in a few months. The cubs do not become well grown 
before the second summer, and until then associate with the 
mother and learn to hunt by watching her methods. A very 
charming picture of puma-kitten life and puma-mother care is 
drawn by the Sioux author, Dr. Eastman, in his book of stories”° 
of the ‘‘animal people.” In the autumn the family is driven 
down from the high mountains by snow, and it is then they 
become most troublesome to the ranchman. Except in some 
of the wilder parts of the Appalachian and Ozark ranges, or 
in swamps along the Gulf coast, no pumas are now to be found 
east of the Great Plains; yet it is hardly more than a century 
since they inhabited the Highlands of the Hudson. 
As to the availability of young pumas as pets likely to remain 
safe companions for their masters after they begin to get their 
full size and strength, accounts differ greatly, as no doubt did 
the specimens tried. The most enlightening discussion of the 
matter, based upon an actual and most instructive experiment, 
may be read in J. Hampden Porter’s masterly essay ”* on the 
puma as he knew it in South America. His final word is: ‘‘A 
loose beast of prey is not a fit associate for a nervous man.” 
Dr. Merriam ‘® concludes that in the Adirondacks the puma 
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