The Headwaters of the Paraguay 127 



afterward returning to the same spot. They included big 

 and little white egrets and also the mauve and pearl- 

 colored heron, with a partially black head and many- 

 colored bill, which flies with quick, repeated wing-flap- 

 pings, instead of the usual slow heron wing-beats. 



In the warehouse were scores of skins of jaguar, 

 puma, ocelot, and jaguarundi, and one skin of the big, 

 small-toothed red wolf. These were all brought in by the 

 cowhands and by friendly Indians, a price being put on 

 each, as they destroyed the stock. The jaguars occasion- 

 ally killed horses and full-grown cows, but not bulls. 

 The pumas killed the calves. The others killed an oc- 

 casional very young calf, but ordinarily only sheep, little 

 pigs, and chickens. There was one black jaguar-skin; 

 melanism is much more common among jaguars than 

 pumas, although once Miller saw a black puma that had 

 been killed by Indians. The patterns of the jaguar-skins, 

 and even more of the ocelot-skins, showed wide varia- 

 tion, no two being alike. The pumas were for the most 

 part bright red, but some were reddish gray, there being 

 much the same dichromatism that I found among their 

 Colorado kinsfolk. The jaguarundis were dark brown- 

 ish gray. All these animals, the spotted jaguars and 

 ocelots, the monochrome black jaguars, red pumas, and 

 dark-gray jaguarundis, were killed in the same locality, 

 with the same environment. A glance at the skins and a 

 moment's serious thought would have been enough to 

 show any sincere thinker that in these cats the coloration 

 pattern, whether concealing or revealing, is of no conse- 

 quence one way or the other as a survival factor. The 

 spotted patterns conferred no benefit as compared with 



