The Puma 265 



through the forest, these natives never know whether they 

 hear a prowling cougar, or the voice of that god from 

 whom its race descended. Botos, a demon of woodland 

 lakes, guides the beast to his prey ; the basilisk worm 

 Minhocao is somehow connected with it in its designs 

 against human beings, and the deadly man-like Caepora 

 shrieks in concert with pumas as they roam through the 

 darkness. W. A. Parry ("The Cougar") says that its 

 cry " can only be likened to a scream of demoniac laugh- 

 ter," and that the female's answer to her mate's call re- 

 sembles "the wail of a child in terrible pain." 



James Orton and Prince Maximilian of Nieiiwied have 

 severally settled it that cougars are all abject cowards. 

 Speaking from personal recollection, the author feels no 

 hesitation in saying that it required great singleness of 

 mind to come to this conclusion, and much dexterity to go 

 where they did and avoid seeing things which might have 

 modified this conclusion. 



It does not follow, for reasons which have been ex- 

 plained at length, that because a puma attacks a grizzly 

 bear he must be dangerous to a man ; or because numbers 

 of men have undoubtedly been killed in some places, that 

 it should be formidable to human beings everywhere. 



" When hungry," says Theodore Roosevelt (" Hunting 

 Trips of a Ranchman "), " a cougar will attack anything it 

 can master." Audubon, however, supposes that it never 

 verifures to assail such large animals as cows or steers. 

 William B. Stevenson ("Twenty Years in South Amer- 

 ica ") tells us how destructive this creature is to horses, 

 ^^4 also .how the more than half-wild cattle of the pampas 



