146 THE BOOK OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM 



' Tiger ' is as carelessly wrong as is ' Lion ' for the Puma, since the 

 Jaguar is not striped but spotted, so that it closely resembles a 

 Leopard." 



The Puma is uniform pale fox-red to slaty-blue in general colour ; 

 it has black lips, a white patch on each side of the muzzle, and 

 white on the throat, belly and inside of legs. The largest adult 

 attains a length of about eight feet and a weight of some two hundred 

 pounds. The head is full (see Fig. no) and gives an expression to 

 the beast which is lacking in most of its foreign relatives. There 

 are more females than males, but the latter, in a district where the 

 former are scarce, will travel long distances in search of a partner. 

 Sometimes it appears they pair for life, but at others the union is 

 only a temporary one. 



The female selects an isolated cave or quiet environment in some 

 rocky fastness for the production of her family, but in a country 

 where these secret silences are unavailable she resorts to a dense 

 thicket, or a cane brake, as a suitable lair. The "nest" is made 

 up of herbage of various kinds. 



In the tropical south of the great continent the young are pro- 

 duced about February, but in the north the breeding season is later. 

 Four or five young ones constitute the litter, but frequently less, 

 and, curious to relate, only two seem to survive. During their 

 infancy, it should be noted, young Pumas are spotted and the tail 

 is ringed, but in a few months these markings disappear. 



The cubs keep company with the female, watching the hunt and 

 learning to procure food on their own account, but the rigours of 

 oncoming Winter drive the beasts from the higher altitudes, and at 

 such time the cattle-owner suffers acutely from their ravages. Ex- 

 President Roosevelt, in his Outdoor Pastimes of an American 

 Hunter, says that " in its essential habits and traits the big, slinking, 

 nearly unicoloured Cat seems to be much the same everywhere, 

 whether living in mountain, open plain, or forest, under arctic cold 

 or tropic heat. When the settlements become thick it retires to dense 

 forest, dark swamp or inaccessible mountain gorge, and moves about 

 only at night. In wilder regions it not infrequently roams during 

 the day and ventures freely into the open. Deer are its customary 

 prey when they are plentiful, bucks, does and fawns being killed 

 indifferently. Usually the Deer is killed almost instantaneously, 

 but occasionally there is quite a scufHe, in which the Cougar may 

 get bruised, though, as far as I know, never seriously. It is also a 



