THE CAT TRIBE 51 
was scarce, declared that 4,000 jaguars were killed annually, and 2,000 skins exported from 
Buenos Ayres alone. It was clearly common on the Pampas in his day, and made as great 
havoc among the cattle and horses as it does to-day. 
THE Puma 
The Puma is a far more interesting creature. It is found from the mountains in Montana, 
next the Canadian boundary, to the south of Patagonia. Many stories of its ferocity may 
have some foundation; but the writer believes there is no recorded instance of the northern 
puma attacking man unprovoked, though in the few places where it now survives it kills cattle- 
calves and colts. It is relentlessly hunted with dogs, treed, and shot. As to the puma of the 
Pots by Ohiusanee Maechaveal ig [Berlin 
FEMALE PUMA 
This shows a puma alert and vigilant, with ears pricked forward 
southern plains and central forests, the natives, whether Indians or Gauchos, agree with the 
belief, steadily handed down from the days of the first Spanish conquest, that the puma is the 
one wild cat which is naturally friendly to man. The old Spaniards called it amigo del Cristiano 
(the Christian’s friend); and Mr. Hudson, in « The Naturalist in La Plata,” gives much evidence 
of this most curious and interesting tendency: “It is notorious that where the puma is the only 
large beast of prey it is perfectly safe for a small child to go out and sleep on the plain. . . . 
The puma is always at heart a kitten, taking unmeasured delight in its frolics; and when, 
as often happens, one lives alone in the desert, it will amuse itself for hours fighting mock bat. 
tles or playing hide-and-seek with imaginary companions, or lying in wait and putting all its 
wonderful strategy in practice to capture a passing butterfly.” From Azara downwards these 
stories have been told too often not to be largely true; and in old natural histories, whose 
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