BEHAVIOR TOWARDS MAN 
Every hunter of his day represented them as always cowardly, 
and the weight of testimony ever since, and in all parts of the 
continent, confirms their awe of man and ‘their prudence. The 
Brazilians dread the puma much less than the jaguar, and the 
Indians of our continent would rather meet it than a bear, 
yet both hold it in high respect, and among the Zufiis it stands 
as chief of the ‘‘prey gods.” 
Some extraordinary stories are told, by otherwise highly 
credible observers, of the beast’s attitude toward man — 
Pasa ang ShOMeES 
a which I 
have recounted and 
commented on at 
some length in my 
“Wild Neighbors.” 
It has happened in 
hundreds of cases, 
perhaps, that a 
puma would dog 
the trail of a man 
for days, or lurk 
about his camping PROFILE OF A PUMA. ao as 
place or shanty, 
without harming him; they have been met face to face by 
hundreds of persons and slunk away after a shout or a thrown 
stone; yet now and then, as the records prove, one has followed 
his stalk by the deadly spring, or encountering a child has struck 
it down, or has attacked a man with tigerish ferocity. 
When the experience is almost universal that there is nothing 
a puma dreads and avoids so much as it does mankind, how shall 
such a contradiction be accounted for as follows? ‘In the sum- 
mer of 1893 a very large puma, in perfect health and vigor, walked 
one noonday into an extensive logging camp near Davis, West 
Virginia, traversed one wing of the long building in which the 
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