52 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
writers believed the puma was 
a terrible man-eater, they also 
appear as “ wonderful escapes.” 
One tells how a man put his 
poncho, or cloak, over his back 
when crawling up.to get a shot 
at some duck, and felt something 
heavy on the end of it.. He 
crept from under it, and there 
was a puma sitting on it, which 
did not offer to hurt him. 
As space forbius further 
quotation from Mr. Hudson’s 
experiences, which should be 
read, the writer will only add one 
anecdote which was told him by 
Mr. Everard im Thurn, C. B., 
formerly an official in British 
Guiana. He was going up one 
of the big rivers in his steam- 
launch, and gave a passage to an 
elderly and respectable Cornish 
miner, who wanted to go up to — 
a gold-mine. The visitor had his 
aoe meals on the boat, but at night 
_ OCELOT went ashore with the men and 
Note the elongated spots, and their arrangement in chains slung his hammock between two 
trees, leaving the cabin to his 
host. One morning two of the Indian crew brought the miner’s hammock on board with a 
good deal of laughing and taiking. Their master asked what the joke was, whereupon, pointing 
to the trees whence they had unsilung the hammock, one said, “ Tiger sleep with old man last 
night.” They “were quite in earnest, and pointed out a hollow and marks on the leaves, which 
showed that a puma had been lying just under the man's hammock. When asked if he had 
noticéd ‘anything in the night, he said, “ Only the frogs croaking wakened me up.” The croak- 
ing off the frogs was probably the hoarse purring of the friendly puma enjoying his proximity 
to a sleeping man.’’ Mr. Hudson quotes a case in which four pumas played round and leapt over 
a person camping out on the Pampas. He watched them for some time, and then went to sleep! 
Many of those brought to this country come with their tempers ruined by ill-treatment and 
hardship; but a large proportion are as tame as cats. Captain Marshall had one at Marlow 
which used to follow him on a chain and watch the boats full of pleasure-seekers at the lock. 
The puma is always a beautiful creature,—the fur cinnamon-coloured, tinged with gold; the 
belly and chest white; the tail long, full, and round. Though friendly to man, it is a desperate 
cattle-killer, and particularly fond of horse-flesh, so much so that it has been suggested that the 
indigenous wild horses of America were destroyed by the puma. 
There are two other cats of the Pampas—the Grass-cat, not unlike our wild cat in appear- 
ance and habits, and the Woop-cat, or Geoffroy’s Cat. It is a tabby, and a most elegant 
creature, of which there is a specimen, at the time of writing, in the Zoo. 
Photo by Ottomar Anschutz] 
THE OCELOT 
In the forest region is also found the most beautiful of the medium-sized cats. This is the 
