The Faguar and. Puma. 23 
report, and the fact that he had seen in Patagonia the skeletons 
of guanacos with their necks dislocated, Darwin believed that 
the jaguar springs upon the shoulder of its prey, and by 
dragging back the head with one paw, breaks the neck, and he 
ascribes a similar habit to the puma. If this is the method of 
attack on the capybara, it implies very great strength indeed; 
the neck of that animal is very short and thick, and its general 
proportions similar to those of the hippopotamus. 
Nothing on or above the earth comes amiss to the jaguar; he 
climbs with the agility of a cat, and it has been maintained that 
he lives to a large extent on fish when haunting the jungles of 
the large rivers. His unquestionable boldness has given rise to 
many travellers’ tales, among them one to the effect that he lies 
in wait on an overhanging branch above a road or forest path- 
way, and pounces on the unfortunate passer-by. However this 
may be, jaguars have walked into towns and killed people, and 
surprised men left in charge of boats by swimming from shore 
and climbing on board. During floods in such large rivers as 
the Parana, the jaguars collect in numbers on the islands, or are 
brought down on rafts of drift timber, and stranded perhaps 
close to a settlement, Being driven desperate with hunger, they 
will then attack man or beast at every opportunity. 
Inferior in every respect to the jaguar is its congener, the 
puma, which is seldom guilty of man-eating. It happened to 
myself, however, to encounter one of these animals in a jungle 
on the La Plata, in circumstances which might have ended in 
manslaughter at least. Although I had been duly warned of the 
presence of a “lion” in the reedy ground near the river, I could 
not resist the temptation of going out early in the morning to 
pick up a few snipe or teal in a favourite spot. The still, 
misty atmosphere recalled an autumn morning on the banks 
of the Thames, and nothing was further from my thoughts than 
the unpleasant reminder about to be made to me, that this was 
a small tributary of that mighty stream which drains the 
whole of South America from the fifteenth to the thirty- 
fifth parallel of latitude, and swarms with dangerous game. 
