28 Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



covery tended to show that this fauna had lasted much 

 later in South America than was the case with the cor- 

 responding faunas in other parts of the world ; and there- 

 fore it tended to disprove the claims advanced by Doctor 

 Ameghino for the extreme age, geologically, of this 

 fauna, and for the extreme antiquity of man on the 

 American continent. 



One day Doctor Moreno handed me a copy of The 

 Outlook containing my account of a cougar-hunt in Ari- 

 zona, saying that he noticed that I had very little faith 

 in cougars attacking men, although I had explicitly stated 

 that such attacks sometimes occurred. I told him. Yes, 

 that I had found that the cougar was practically harmless 

 to man, the undoubtedly authentic instances of attacks on 

 men being so exceptional that they could in practice be 

 wholly disregarded. Thereupon Doctor Moreno showed 

 me a scar on his face, and told me that he had himself 

 been attacked and badly mauled by a puma which was 

 undoubtedly trying to prey on him; that is, which had 

 started on a career as a man-eater. This was to me 

 most interesting. I had often met men who knew other 

 men who had seen other men who said that they had 

 been attacked by pumas, but this was the first time that 

 I had ever come across a man who had himself been 

 attacked. Doctor Moreno, as I have said, is not only 

 an eminent citizen, but an eminent scientific man, and his 

 account of what occurred is unquestionably a scientifi- 

 cally accurate statement of the facts. I give it exactly 

 as the doctor told it; paraphrasing a letter he sent me, 

 and including one or two answers to questions I put 

 to him. The doctor, by the way, stated to me that he 



