112 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY 



packs as those of the Mississippi and Louisiana planters, 

 with whom I have hunted bear, wUd-eat, and deer in 

 the cane-brakes of the lower Mississippi, would not 

 only enjoy fine hunting in these vast marshes of the 

 upper Paraguay, but would also do work of real scien- 

 tific value as regards all the big cats. 



Only a limited number of the naturahsts who have 

 worked in the tropics have had any experience with the 

 big beasts whose life-histories possess such peculiar in- 

 terest. Of aU the biologists who have seriously studied 

 the South American fauna on the ground. Bates 

 probably rendered most service ; but he hardly seems 

 even to have seen the animals with which the hunter 

 is fairly familiar. His interests, and those of the other 

 biologists of his kind, lay in other directions. In conse- 

 quence, in treating of the Hfe-histories of the very inter- 

 esting big game, we have been largely forced to rely 

 either on native report, in which acutely accurate obser- 

 vation is invariably mixed with wild fable, or else on 

 the chance remarks of travellers or mere sportsmen, 

 who had not the training to make them understand 

 even what it was desirable to observe. Nowadays there 

 is a growing proportion of big-game hunters, of sports- 

 men, who are of the Schilling, Selous, and Shiras type. 

 These men do work of capital value for science. The 

 mere big-game butcher is tending to disappear as a 

 type. On the other hand, the big-game hunter who is 

 a good observer, a good field naturaUst, occupies at 

 present a more important position than ever before, and 

 it is now recognized that he can do work which the 

 closet naturahst cannot do. The big-game hunter of this 

 type, and the out-doors, faxmal naturalist, the student of 

 the life-histories of big mammals, have open to them in 

 South America a wonderful field in which to work. 



