A Jaguar-Hunt on the Taquary 87 



of Africa when they spoke of the lion and rhinoceros. 

 Until the habit of scientific accuracy in observation and 

 record is achieved and until specimens are preserved and 

 carefully compared, entirely truthful men, at home in 

 the wilderness, will whole-heartedly accept, and repeat as 

 matters of gospel faith, theories which split the grizzly 

 and black bears of each locality in the United States, and 

 the lions and black rhinos of South Africa, or the jaguars 

 and pumas of any portion of South America, into sev- 

 eral different species, all with widely different habits. 

 They will, moreover, describe these imaginary habits 

 with such sincerity and minuteness that they deceive 

 most listeners ; and the result sometimes is that an other- 

 wise good naturalist will perpetuate these fables, as 

 Hudson did when he wrote of the puma. Hudson was 

 a capital observer and writer when he dealt with the 

 ordinary birds and mammals of the well-settled districts 

 near Buenos Aires and at the mouth of the Rio Negro ; 

 but he knew nothing of the wilderness. This is no re- 

 flection on him; his books are great favorites of mine, 

 and are to a large degree models of what such books 

 should be; I only wish that there were hundreds of such 

 writers and observers who would give us similar books 

 for all parts of America. But it is a mistake to accept 

 him as an authority on that concerning which he was 

 ignorant. 



An interesting incident occurred on the day we killed 

 our first jaguar. We took our lunch beside a small but 

 deep and obviously permanent pond. I went to the edge 

 to dip up some water, and something growled or bellowed 

 at me only a few feet away. It was a jacare-tinga or 



